From the Publisher
Michael Morpurgo is the author of more than 60 children’s books, including
Waiting for Anya and Kensuke’s Kingdom. Michael Foreman, whose books include
the acclaimed War Boy, is a recipient of the Whitbread Award, the Writers’
Guild Children’s Book Award, and the Smarties Prize; he was also shortlisted
for the Carnegie Medal.
School Library Journal
As a youngster, Antonito lived on a small farm outside the village of Sauceda.
His father raised strong black bulls for the bullring, or corrida. The boy
bonded with a newborn calf after its mother died, and in order to save it, he
led Paco into the surrounding hills. While they were away, Franco’s soldiers
bombed the village. Leaving Paco behind, Antonito returned home, discovering
the farm in flames. He escaped back into the safety of the countryside, but
couldn’t find the calf. Weeks later, suffering from hunger and exhaustion, he
was found by his Uncle Juan, a Republican soldier, and nursed back to health.
While recuperating, he heard a tale of a large black bull that chased down
Nationalist soldiers, and he hoped that it was Paco. Years later, after he
dreamed that the creature rested next to him while he slept in the forest, he
awakened to discover hoof marks of a massive bull in the still-warm grass.
Morpurgo’s action-filled novel packs an emotional punch. The author gradually
reveals the historical information and narrates the tale with the careful
detachment of someone relating a story so awful that he can hardly bear to tell
it. Ideal for reluctant readers, this book focuses on the loss and grief that
grows out of times of war.-Shawn Brommer, South Central Library System,
Madison, WI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A young child sees violence done in the bull ring, and worse violence to his
small town, in this powerful, simply written tale by Britain’s Children’s
Laureate, set during the Spanish Civil War. Horrified to learn that the corrida
involves not just a dance, but a death, six-year-old Antonito returns to his
father’s farm outside the village of Saucedo, determined to save his beloved
bull Paco from such a bloody fate. But by sneaking out to free Paco and the
rest of his father’s herd early one morning, he becomes a witness as Saucedo is
bombed, and the survivors massacred, by Franco’s forces. Foreman ably captures
Antonito’s innocence, devastation, and slow recovery in black-and-white
vignettes; Morpurgo likewise delineates the close relationship between boy and
bull, and the shock of being swept up in war, in ways that will resonate with
younger readers. Compelling. (Fiction. 9-11)”