Anne Hamilton's Reviews > Outlaw: The Story of Robin Hood

Yep, it's another book by Michael Morpurgo with his trademark framing story. This one's a winner.

A boy spends a fearful night with his grandmother in the tiny room under the stairs, lit by guttering candles, as a hurricane rages outside. In the morning he races out to see if "his" tree, a great oak in a high valley, has survived. He is devastated to see it has been entirely uprooted. As he clambers down into the crater made by its overthrow, he finds a silver arrowhead, a hollow cow's horn, a long bow of wood and — a skeleton.

Fainting, he falls into a dream. Or is it the dream falling into him? Has Robin Hood come to the future and merged with his memories or has he tumbled into the past to learn the true story of the legendary Outlaw of Sherwood Forest?

The merrie men are misfits, dwarves, hunchbacks and the disabled in this retelling. Marion is a cagot, an albino. Friar Tuck is a man of faith, his failing a fondness for a little tipple too many. Little John is the king's armourer, a smith who appears — so Tuck says — because the Lord knew the Outlaws needed one. As Much the Miller's son is the answer to a need for someone to teach the Outlaws how to wrestle.

Robin has a little son Martin who is captured by treachery. It is Marion who saves him.

All the elements of the legend are there but sufficiently rearranged to contain a more than a few surprises — and keep the interest bubbling along at a very merrie pace.

One of his best.