The framing story of Great-Aunt Laura's will, while it works wonderfully to link the turtle with the Zanzibar, again creates that curious anomaly: a story that's more for adults than children, even though it's marketed as a children's book. They have three farms in Devon, Wales and Gloucestershire, open to inner city school children who come to stay and work with the animals. I still have the book and opening it this morning I still have the scrap piece of paper that I wrote my introduction speech on.

No girl on any of the Scilly Isles has been an oarsman on a gig and no daughter of his is going to be the first. As if that wasn't enough, a devastating storm blows off roofs, kills the only working cows, and washes up turtles. Written as a diary entry - I like the idea of doing up the classroom like a set from the book and using maps to find out where the Scilly Isles are and what they look like. I found it really lovely, the thought of a young mind sharing their thoughts and feelings with animal, the way I would do with my pets.

The child in the story has a bond with a turtle around half-way through the book and I couldn't help wondering whether this was the beginning of Morpurgo's slight obsession of child-animal partnerships. I was especially struck by Laura and Granny May's kindness and compassion in saving the dying turtle when they had been hungry for days and the turtle could have made a filling meal. He has an unerring moral compass – his schoolteacher past has never quite left him – and books such as War Horse and The Butterfly Lion have a strong social concience and an honesty that makes them universal. A story where they are just about to give up when they are reminded that good things come to those who wait. The story revolves around the lives of its main characters - Father, Mother, their children Billy and Laura and Granny May.

A poignant, but also slightly underwhelming Victorian tale of how a remote group of islanders (in the South West of England) were saved by the wreck of the Zanzibar, as recounted after the funeral of an island family's matriarch. On saying this, discussing Billy's adventures would be exciting for children and perhaps the simple and rather dull aspect of life on the Scilly Isles at the turn of the 20th century was a true reflection.

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