Michael Morpurgo was born in 1943 in St. Albans, England, a town just north of London. He grew up in a Britain that was recovering from wartime destruction and shortages. He has drawn on this experience several times for book backgrounds, such as the scarred urban scenery in his Mr. Nobody's Eyes. At age seven he was sent away to boarding school. He sang in the choir at King's School at Canterbury, which traces its founding back to around 600 A.D.

As a boy he was not an enthusiastic reader, he says, except for the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. He was more interested in playing rugby, and in fact had a reputation for being slightly stupid.

After attending King's College, London, Morpurgo became a teacher in a primary school. He taught schoolchildren for a number of years, and his turn toward writing came when...