By: John Norton
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In the depths of winter, turkeys are hatching on the farm. By next Christmas, they will have grown and will be delicious Christmas dinners for lots of people. But Bertie is a very clever turkey, who has learnt a lot. When the lorry carrying Bertie, his friends Tulula and Charlie and the rest of the flock to market overturns, Bertie leads their escape. He has a clever plan to get their freedom. But will it work, or will they end up on the Christmas dinner table?
John Norton is a retired town planner living in his home county of Norfolk. This is his first published book, which was inspired by a real life incident he witnessed in Norwich, when a lorry carrying turkeys to Christmas market overturned.
This book was inspired by a real-life incident that the author witnessed in Norwich. He saw a lorry full of turkeys that overturned on its way to a Christmas market. This led him to write a short tale about turkeys on a farm, in order to gently illustrate the fact that turkeys are sentient beings with feelings. The hero of the story is Bertie the turkey, who hatches on a factory farm. Turkeys are clever birds, and Bertie is cleverer than most. He learns important information from listening to the local radio station that is on the farmer’s phone, and he realises that he and his friends are being fattened up to be eaten on Christmas Day. When the lorry taking them all to slaughter skids on an icy patch of road and overturns, he encourages all the turkeys to escape out of the back. He then comes up with a plan to get the mayor of Norwich to grant him and his 100 friends freedom for life. This is a sweet story, illustrated with cute drawings. And unlike most stories about turkeys, it has a happy ending.
