Kensuke's Kingdom

Kensuke's Kingdom is a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman. Following a fictionalised version of Morpurgo stranded on a desert island as a child, it was first published in 1999 by Egmont UK, and was later released by other publishers including Scholastic.

The frame is a version of the author's own childhood, and within it the story belongs to eleven-year-old Michael, whose family decides to sail around the world after his parents are made redundant from the local brickworks. They set off with their dog, and the voyage goes well at first, taking them to Brazil, South Africa and Australia among other places, before the storm that puts Michael overboard.

The island portion of the book is a two-hander. Kensuke is a former Japanese soldier who survived the war and the bombing of Hiroshima while his family died, and he has arranged his life to be left alone, so the arrival of a child requires him to decide whether to give that seclusion up in order to return Michael to his parents. His parents buy the yacht after both of them lose their jobs at the local brickworks, so the voyage begins as a family decision rather than as an accident.