TEHRAN – English book author Sir Michael Andrew Morpurgo’s children’s book “Toro! Toro!” has been published in Persian by Monadi-e Tarbiat.

Shirin Safai Molavi is the translator of the book first released in 2001.

Illustrated by Michael Foreman, the book is the story of a young boy growing up in Andalucia, Spain, on a farm rearing bulls for the bull ring. 

Antonito hand rears a little black calf and they become firm friends, but the boy doesn't yet understand the fate of the black bulls – the corrida and death. 

Later, when he learns of the horrors of the bull fight, he frees Paco, the black bull, and rides with him into the hills. There they witness the bombing of their village (it's the year 1936, and the Spanish Civil War has started) and Antonito cannot go back – his family and the farm are destroyed, and Paco has run off, wild with fright. 

He decides to stay in the hills, where he meets up with the Resistance fighters. During the War, Antonito hears stories round the campfire of the wonderful black bull, who becomes a symbol of freedom for them all. 

Could this really be Paco? But no one has ever seen him. After the war, when Antonito is working as a muleteer in the mountains, he falls asleep and dreams of Paco. In the morning, he wakes to see hoof prints on the ground beside him.

Michael Morpurgo is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982).

His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or World War I.

Morpurgo became the third Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005, and he is also the current President of BookTrust, the UK's largest children's reading charity.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of “Toro! Toro!”

ABU/