My review for the CBCA:

Lucky Button, by master storyteller Michael Morphugo, introduces us to young Jonah, who spends his nights caring for his ailing mother and his days attending an English high school. Jonah is lonely and sad and the obstacles to his happiness seem unsurmountable. He finds solace in music and when he is cast as Piggy in a musical version of Lord of the Flies, he embraces the role. However, the kids playing bullies in the musical are also bullies in real life, and things go from bad to worse.

Jonah’s school is a grand old institution, a school originally established for foundlings, where pictures of past students line the walls and ghosts are rumoured to haunt the halls. One day Jonah runs from the bullies and finds refuge in the school chapel. Here he spies an old button on the floor which belongs to a ghostly organ player, Nathaniel, and the two meet up. Once a foundling himself, Nathaniel the ghost regales Jonah with stories of his remarkable childhood in the eighteenth century, in which he encountered many famous people.

This touching tale, inspired by real people and events, ends on a hopeful note. A story within a story, beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman, it is likely to appeal to kids eight years and older.

( )

The idea behind this is excellent, I'm just a fraction worried that the execution could lead to unrealistic expectations.

I picked this up after a visit to the Foundling Hospital Museum in London, the original site where Thomas Coram set up a hospital for the poor and abandoned children of the city. It attracted a great deal of high brow support and holds things like Handel's will after he gifted the rights to The Messiah to the Hospital. If you are ever in the vicinity, it is well worth the time to visit. One of the most evocative items are the tokens that a mother would leave with the child. On entry, the children lost their original names and record of their parents, in order to have a clean start. If she were ever in a position to return and reclaim the infant, she could describe the token, or produce her half of the token and match it to the child's. These range from scraps of cloth to punched pennies, to buttons, like that included here. After a while, the London site became too crowded and dirty, and a new hospital and school was built on the outskirts of London. In the middle of the 20th Century, the buildings were transferred to a the county and became a conventional school.

In this book, Jonah is a student at the school. He is a loner, as he is also a carer for his mother, after she had an accident on a bicycle, involving a lorry. Since then, she has been largely confined to a wheelchair and suffers from what we infer as depression. Jonah struggles at school with bullies due to his shyness and not being able to partake in outside school activities. After a nasty bullying incident, he ends up in the school chapel, where he finds a button on the floor and, as a result, meets the ghost of a former foundling boy who relates his life story. It is not all a happy ending, but it is eventful and he explains how he comes to haunt the chapel. Part of his tale is about the button that Jonah picked up, that was his mother's token. In the end, Nat gives the button to Jonah and vanishes.
Its the last few pages that I take issue with. Jonah gets home and his mother's depression seems to have lifted, she has started playing the piano again and she is clearly in a much happier place. That strikes me as setting a very high expectation on anyone with depression that they can simply do something and lift themselves out of it.which is a shame, as I think this covers some bog and important issues. Child carers often feel isolated, as they cannot partake fully in school life. They may even be bullied for being different in that way. All of which should be talked about in this age group. It is very good, and would work well as a story for those who are struggling, there is hope of life, even if it doesn't turn out like the fairy tales. But that almost fairy tale ending undermines it, for me. ( )

Jonah has a pretty miserable life: his wheelchair-bound mother is depressed, he has no friends and he is being bullied at school. The one thing that brings him joy is music. One day when he is hiding in the school chapel, he finds a button. A ghost appears and claims the button. The ghost, Nat, tells Jonah that the school used to be a Foundling Hospital and he was left there as a baby, along with the button. Nat was also very talented musically and, as a boy, was Mozart's companion when Mozart was in England. In spite of his early misfortune, Nat ended up having a happy life and hearing his story gives Jonah hope.
This is a heart-warming story from a master storyteller. Jonah is a very sympathetic character but perhaps a little too good to be true. His story bookends the story of Nat which, although fictional, is grounded in historical fact. The Foundling Hospital in the story is a real place and Nat's story features real people such as Mozart, Hogarth and Handel. This beautiful book has many monochrome ink illustrations as well as a number of full page, coloured watercolour pictures. Although this is a lovely story, beautifully produced, the ending left me a little unsatisfied. After Jonah's encounter with Nat he returns home to discover, his mother has snapped out of her depression and is happily playing the piano. No real reason is given for this transformation - I imagine we are meant to conclude that this is a result of the luck brought by Nat's button. This is not Morpurgo's best story but it will satisfy many of his young fans, especially those interested in history and/or music. ( )