Is it true that the most moving books must be placed during wartime? How strange that the moments of greatest human kindness come during the cruelest of times!
Toro! Toro! is not like the other Morpurgos that I have read, insomuch that it is not about the second world war at all. Yet, it is about cruel, incomprehensible war.
I have never liked the idea of bullfights, not even when I was too young to know that the bull is killed and bleeds to death. I found the idea of a bullfight unnecessarily violent. I couldn’t (and still can’t) understand what the thrill is.
How much stronger the feeling of revulsion would be for a child who has watched the birth of a bull and become its friend!
Paco, a bull, pushes the young boy Antonito to do something that he would never dream of doing. And because of that one act, Antonito’s life – in fact, his whole world – turns upside down.
In true Michael Morpurgo style, Toro! Toro! is a book that keeps you reading until you’ve turned the last page with a tremulous sigh of happiness.
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