This Morning I Met a Whale (UK Edition)
Michael Morpurgo
Language: English
Pages: 16
ISBN: 1406315591
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
At sunrise, young Michael spots a whale on the shores of the Thames and thinks he must be dreaming. But the creature is real and it has a message for him – one that only an open-minded child can deliver to the rest of the world.
The whale warns that the earth's days are numbered and that humans must put right the damage they are doing, but how can Michael fulfil his promise to tell others when neither his teacher nor his classmates will believe his story?
Within hours, the city and the wider world have learned of London's remarkable visitor, and all eyes are on the whale's struggle against the receding tide.
Michael must now join his new friend in a race against time to reach the ocean, and hold fast to his promise in the race to save the world itself.
instead, I looked up river, back towards Battersea Bridge, to see if any of his family might have come with him, but everywhere the river was empty and glassy and still. There was nothing there, nothing that broke the surface anyway. He was alone. He’d come alone. And that was when it happened. The whale spoke! I’m telling you the truth, honest. The whale spoke to me. His voice was like an echoing whisper inside my head, like a talking thought. But it was him talking. It really was, I promise
where he dived down and vanished altogether. This time I wasn’t really that worried. I knew in my heart that he would come back, that he had much more to tell me. All the same, he was gone a long while before he appeared again, and I was so pleased to see him when at last he did. It was the strangest thing, but when he began speaking to me again this time, I found I wasn’t just hearing his words and understanding them. It was as if I could see in my mind everything he was telling me. I was
looking right back at me. It was like he was asking me, “Hey you, what are you doing here? This is my river, don’t you know?” Suddenly, without any warning, he lifted off. Then they all lifted off, all the birds on the shore, all the birds in the river. It was really strange. It was just as if I’d fired a gun or something, but I hadn’t. I looked around. There wasn’t a single bird anywhere. They’d all disappeared. For a while the river was completely still and empty and silent, like it was holding
can. I need you with me.” So Michael did stay. He stayed all that day, and Mrs Fergusson stayed with him, long after all the other children had gone back home. By late afternoon his mother was there with them – they’d got a message to her at work. And the white egret stayed too, watching everything from his buoy. As evening came on they tried to make Michael go home to sleep for a while. “There’s nothing more you can do here,” his mother told him. “And anyway, you can watch it on the
white egret that had never left the the whole way out and the whole way back. The whole of London seemed still with sadness as they passed by under Tower Bridge. AUTHOR’S NOTE On 20 January 2006, an eighteen-foot (five metre) northern bottle-nosed whale was spotted swimming up the Thames past the Houses of Parliament. She swam up as far as Battersea Bridge where she became stranded. For two days rescuers battled to save the whale, as the world looked on, hoping for the best. But in spite of