Kensuke’s Kingdom: Connection with a Contemporary Issue....

Non-school education?

In Kensuke’s Kingdom different types of learning experience are contrasted. Whereas Michael does not seem to learn much from teachers in the conventional school setting, he learns copious amounts from his parents whilst on his voyage and from Kensuke whilst on the island.

For geography and history I was to find out and record all I could about every country we visited as we went around the world. For environmental studies and art I was to note down and draw all the creatures we saw…..

We passed south of an island called st Helena the other day. Nothing much there, except it’s the place where napolean was exiled. So, of course, I had to do a history

project on him. It was quite interesting really…

I would watch him for hours on end. I always liked to draw, but from Kensuke I learned to love it. He taught me all this entirely without speaking, he simply showed me.

Home education in the UK remains a legal option for families - as long as they provide a suitable full-time alternative. A recent survey carried out by the BBC attempted to find out how many children are being taught this way, but the studies’ attempts were inconclusive - not least because there is no obligation on families to tell their local authorities that they are home educating. The BBC’s sample study of nine local authorities found between 0.09% and 0.42% of school populations being taught at home - but this would not include any children who were not registered as home-educated.

If these figures were applied nationally, this would mean between 7,400 and 34,400 children were being taught at home - most of them in the secondary age group.

Common reasons for home educating, the study found, were fears about bullying and unhappiness with the quality or style of education available in local schools.

Ann Newstead, a spokesperson for home education group Education Otherwise says that research from home educators suggests that a total in the region of 40,000 to 50,000 children are being educated from home in the UK. She echoed the findings of the BBC’s research - that bullying and fears about the suitability of school for children's individual needs were among the main reasons that parents opted out of the school system. In her own children's case, she said schools were unable to provide the type of education needed for their particular special needs. And she rejected the idea that children taught at home would miss out on the social aspect of school. She belongs to a support group of 70 families that meets regularly, giving home educated children a chance to socialise and play together....

For a recent Financial Times article on Home Education follow the link: http://robblackhurst.com/2008/homeed/

Travel Tracer - Michael's emotional journey - part 2.

Travel Tracer - Michael's emotional journey.

The graphs track the emotional journey of Michael through the novel.

Summary of the novel - In detail.

Kensuke’s Kingdom was Winner of the Red House Children’s Book Award 2000.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is the story of an ordinary boy who is taken on an extraordinary adventure as full of ups and downs as the waves on the sea. In being lost, he finds inner strength and learns to balance his desperate hope for change with acceptance of everyday reality. The story is beautifully narrated in the first person by Michael himself, and includes samples of his drawings.

Michael is eleven when his father loses his job at the brickworks and uses the redundancy money to buy the Peggy Sue. After nautical training with Barnacle Bill, mother and father set sail around the world with Michael and his ‘one-ear-up and one-ear-down black and white sheepdog’, curiously named Stella Artois. Mum is the skipper and Michael is responsible for scrupulously maintaining the ship’s log.

At school I had never been much good at writing. I could never think of what to write or how to begin. But on the Peggy Sue I found I could open up my log and just write. There was always so much I wanted to say. And that’s the thing. I found I didn’t really write it down at all. Rather, I said it. I spoke it from my head, down my arm, through my fingers and my pencil, and on to the page. And that’s how it reads to me now, all these years later, like me talking.

Extracts from the ship’s log, spanning ten months from September to July, describe in words and pictures the thrill of sailing past Africa, playing football in Brazil, spotting sharks, elephants in South Africa as well as the boredom of baked beans. Michael and his family are having a wonderful time.

One night, however, when his parents are asleep below deck, Michael and Stella fall overboard in a sudden gust of wind. They are washed up on an island in the Pacific inhabited by orang-utans. They are left fish and fresh water by a benefactor who remains hidden … until Michael lights a fire. ‘He stood up and came towards me, now out of the smoke. He was not an orang-utan at all. He was a man.’

Although Kensuke forbids Michael to light a fire and banishes him to one end of the island, he continues to provide fish, fruit and water. Michael finds joy in throwing sticks for Stella and swimming in the afternoons but for the most part of each lonely day he sits on a hilltop, ‘looking out to sea and hoping, sometimes even praying too, for the sight of a ship.’ His faith keeps him going.

The poignant smell of vinegar reminds Michael of fish and chips, and his father. But Michael is not home but paralysed and dangerously ill from jellyfish sting. Kensuke has rescued Michael and tenderly nurses him back to health. They form a close bond as Kensuke gently passes on his fishing skills and knowledge of how to survive on the island. Eventually, Kensuke shows Michael how to draw and paint on shells. ‘He taught me all this entirely without speaking. He simply showed me.’

At last, Kensuke begins to speak English and tells his story to ‘Mica’ – about his wife and son, the war, the poachers, and about how he rescued Michael and Stella Artois from the sea. ‘You are like son to me now. We happy people. We paint. We fish. We happy. We stay together.’ Michael is very fond of Kensuke but he cannot simply forget his mother and father and becomes troubled by despair at ever leaving the island.

‘It is easier when you are old like me, Micasan,’ he said.

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘Waiting,’ he said. ‘One day a ship will come, Micasan. Maybe soon, maybe not so soon. But it will come. Life must not be spent always hoping, always waiting. Life is for living.’

One day a ship does come, bringing ‘killer men’ hunting for young orang-utans and gibbons. Kensuke and Michael manage to hide the majority of the friendly orang-utans in their cave but are unable to protect the gibbons.

From that time, Kensuke’s priority is the safety of his orang-utan family. So when the Peggy Sue finally returns to rescue Michael, Kensuke chooses to stay: ‘This Kensuke’s Kingdom. Emperor must stay in his Kingdom, look after his people.’ Finally, Kensuke secures Michael’s promise of silence. ‘I stay here. I live life in peace.’ Ironically, Kensuke has the last laugh. In the Postscript, we discover that Kensuke’s wife and son had not been killed when Nagasaki was bombed. Michael goes to Japan to meet Michiya who ‘laughs just like his father did.’

In contrast, Michael’s mother always knew her son was alive, and had never given up searching from island to island until she found him: ‘Not a miracle, just faith.’

The reader is left to ponder the time frame of the story and decide for themselves if Kensuke was right to remain in his Kingdom.

Illustrator - the story in a picture

Investigating Kensuke's Kingdom - Understanding the major themes.

“One day American soldiers come. I hide. I not want to surrender, not honourable thing to do. I very afraid too. I hide in forest with orang-utans. Americans make fire on beach. They laugh in the night. I listen. I hear them. They say everyone dead in Nagasaki. They very happy about this. They laugh. I very sure now I stay on the island. Why go home? Soon Americans, they go away. My ship under water by now. They not find it. My ship still here. Under sand now, part of island now” (p 122).

investigating Kensuke's Kingdom - Morpugo's viewpoint - Defoe or Swift?

There are elements of both authors in Morpurgo’s text. The novel does praise the industriousness of Kensuke and Michael, and also his parents. There is a good reverse of Defoe’s character dynamic, with Michael meeting someone from another culture and teaching him English. However, Kensuke is the true king of the island, and Michael the apprentice. The teaching of English is part of a trade necessary to Michael’s survival, and not simply an imperialistic model.

The destruction and corruption of man is a theme in this novel as it is in Gulliver’s Travels, as Morpurgo looks at the repercussions of the Nagasaki bomb over fifty years since it was detonated, and indicates Kensuke’s horror at the Americans being happy at what they had done. There are also poachers, who kill the gibbons and upset the natural order of the island. However, Morpurgo also rejects elements of Swift’s ideas- it is a man who protects the orang-utans and stops them being killed as well, as a protective father figure.