EVENING LECTURE: 'The Importance of Roots in Children's Literature' - Dr Marnie Devereux and Dr Beth-Marie Lockwood

Part of our 2026-27 Roots & Networks Lecture Series

Join us for a drinks reception from 6pm. The lecture will start at 6.30pm and afterwards there'll be time for questions.

The Importance of Roots in Children's Literature

Dr Marnie Devereux and Dr Beth-Marie Lockwood

This lecture seeks to examine three prominent Devon based authors, Michael Morpurgo, David Rees, and Philip Reeve. In this discussion we will explore the work of these three children’s authors highlighting the importance of roots within the three authors’ writing.

Three prize-winning texts by these authors share a common theme. They highlight issues of home, heritage, displacement, and environmental collapse against a backdrop of war-torn landscapes. Previous Children’s Laureate and author of over 150 children’s books, Michael Morpurgo is known for writing about his home county of Devon with a particular focus on the importance of landscape and war in shaping children’s identity. The idea of home, transience and community is central to many of Morpurgo’s texts, with named places and landscapes appearing in his work. We will discuss how war is portrayed in Morpurgo’s writing and how the importance of our history has shaped and continues to shape children’s literature.

Philip Reeve is a Dartmoor based author writing several series for both younger children and young adult readers. In this talk we will focus on Reeve’s first novel Mortal Engines published in 2001. This went on to win both the Smarties and Blue Peter prizes and was made into a film in 2018. Using a wholly different perspective on war Reeve explores its environmental impact, using ‘Bare Earth’ as a representation of his homeland of Dartmoor.

David Rees was a lecturer at St Luke’s College, Exeter, and later at Exeter University. His 1978 children’s novel The Exeter Blitz won that year’s Carnegie Medal for the best children’s book by a British subject. The novel explores themes of displacement, unhoming and cultural heritage as seen through the eyes of a 14- year-old Exeter schoolboy and his evacuee friend during World War Two.