The Donkey Who Carried the Wounded

The Donkey who carried the Wounded is a touching story about three ANZAC legends at Gallipoli, written by Jackie French. 

This book describes the story of Simpson and his donkey. Simpson continually risked his life, taking wounded soldiers on the back of his donkey from the battle line to the beach for evacuation. Unfortunately, Simpson was killed by a Turkish machine gun fire while he was helping a wounded man. Amazingly, the donkey obediently continued along the track taking the wounded man to safety. A little later throughout the story, Richard Henderson from New Zealand took over Simpson’s work and continued to guide the donkey while they carried wounded men.  

French has told the story from each of the different characters perspectives which as Gamble and Yates (2008) state, “is dialogic perspectives.” (p.76) By doing this, the reader to able to get to know each character and understand their own feelings about the situation they were in rather than just hearing from one narrator.

French has also used lots of descriptive language which allows the reader to build images in their head about what the setting may be like, what the characters might be like etc. This is an important aspect of writing and reading, because if they reader cannot build up an image, it can be boring and and frustrating for the reader.  

 I believe that this would be a fantastic book for teenagers and would be a good resource for students to begin allow them to begin to understand the importance of the ANZAC landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula.