SuitabookThe Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
Michael Morpurgo
- Reading
- Before reading, explain that the story places a child and her family amid wartime preparations. Pause after the evacuation or disappearance to discuss choice, uncertainty and whose needs are being considered.
- Themes
- Civilian life during war: Lily’s family and 3,000 villagers must leave their homes while Allied forces use the area to practise landings for D-Day. The story presents large-scale military planning through the disruption experienced by a child, her family and her village.
- Courage and risk: Lily is frantic to find Tips and decides to cross the wire towards a danger zone where guns and bombs are present. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Memory and family connection: Many years later, Michael reads his grandmother Lily’s diary and considers how her wartime experience continued to affect their lives. The framing story links a child’s wartime account with a later family reader, suggesting that remembered experience matters across generations.
- Worth knowing
- Consider whether the wartime danger feels manageable for your reader. The story includes evacuation, barbed wire, guns, bombs and a child deciding to cross into a restricted danger zone; the full intensity and ending remain unclear.