Morpurgo's trademark, certain authorial tone is always present, navigating effortlessly through moral ambiguities and alighting surely upon the good, the wise and the right. When she disappears, so does Lily's self-possession. Without Tips, life is uncertain, frightening, intolerable. Tips is Lily's link to the security and familiarity of life before the war. And no-one, nothing is more important to Lily than her beloved Tips. It's easy to read, and Lily's first person narration shows the privations of wartime from a child's point of view for Lily the people still present in her life become more significant than her absent father: Barry the evacuee her truculent, anti-war grandfather her teacher, a Jewish refugee Adie the American GI. Better still, he is shown a window into a past which, despite its place in history, is still redolent with the timeless hopes, dreams and fears of childhood. As Michael reads, he is given an even more intimate connection to the grandmother whose favourite he is. The story opens with Michael, aka Boowie, Lily's grandson and a letter from Lily enclosing her diary. It also deals with the special, formative relationship between young and old and in this way, cleverly reaches across the generations. Despite the background of momentous events, it's a gentle, homely story full of family detail and completely in tune with a child's way of thinking. The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips is absolutely Michael Morpurgo at his best. Frantic to find her cat, Lily ducks under the barbed wire surrounding the village, straight into danger. And, when Tips disappears on moving day, she loses her beloved pet too.
Not only has Lily lost her father to the war, but also her home. Slapton's beach is to be used in training exercises for the Normandy landings and the whole village is to be evacuated. Lily particularly enjoys keeping a diary and it's in her diary that she relates the most awful news of her short life. She loves her cat, Tips, and has no intention of ever kissing a boy, especially one of the townies - evacuees - because they think they're so superior. Lily misses her father terribly he's away fighting in Africa and Italy.
American troops are massing throughout Britain and many of them are based on the Devon coast - some in and around the village of Slapton, the home of twelve-year-old Lily Tregenza. It's 1943 and D-Day is less than a year away.
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books Beautifully written with a host of accurate detail and the classic Morpurgo clear-sighted understanding. Summary: A heart-warming story that reaches across the generations and illuminates the past.
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