Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse has been a London stage play for four years running and has now come to Broadway. The Spielberg film version is slated to be released December 28, 2011.

The story takes place during World War I and describes the horrific conditions and loss of life, both human and animal, that took place.

Morpurgo is a prolific author with a new novel, Little Manfred due to be published in Britain on June 9th by HarperCollins.

The magazine Intelligent Life explored the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres with Morpurgo in their Spring 2011 issue. Flanders Fields is the “most concentrated killing field in British history.” Interestingly, Morpurgo visited the museum with the daughter of the magazine’s literary editor, Flora Fergusson. Flora produced her own book about the author and the trip, called In and Out of the Lands of Sorrow and Remembrance. Flora is struck by Private Peaceful’s grave, a story that Morpurgo had followed in an earlier work; by the empty gas masks hanging throughout the exhibit; and by the exhibit’s audiovisual display of images of the war and of voices reciting Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est (1918) and John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields (1915).

War Horse is one of five children’s books being brought dramatically to life at London’s Imperial War Museum through October 30, 2011.

War Horse is available through NYPL as a book and eAudioBook.

War Horseplay by jurvetson, on Flickr