Shadow

Name: Shadow
Author: Michael Morpurgo
ISBN: 9780007339594

by Michael Morpurgo

Ages 10–13 Reading age 10 Novel Set in everyday life movingadventurous

An Afghan boy and a sniffer dog walk out of Bamiyan together, and years later a British friend fights to stop his deportation.

A story about children and animals, moving and adventurous in tone. We would put it with children of 10–13, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.

Worth knowing before you buy

Wartime separation
Frightening scenes
Separated from family

None of this makes it a bad book — often the opposite. It is here so you can decide whether it is right for your child now or in a year or two.

Our take on this book

Aman and his mother, fleeing the war in Afghanistan, are helped on their terrible journey by a stray sniffer dog they name Shadow — and years later, when the family faces deportation from Britain, the story of that dog becomes the key to whether they can stay. Michael Morpurgo tells it in interwoven voices across time, and it is classic Morpurgo: a war seen through a child's eyes, an animal at the heart of it, and a plea for compassion that never becomes a lecture. The subject — a refugee family's flight and the threat of deportation — is serious and moving, with the frightening realities of war present but handled with his usual gentleness. For a confident reader of nine to twelve it is a powerful, humane novel that puts a human and canine face on a subject children hear about in the news, and a book that tends to leave readers thinking hard about the people behind the headlines.