The children's laureate prize was actually the brainchild of Morpurgo and his friend the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, but it was not set up until after the death of Hughes.
"It could be one of the few things that Michaels Gove and Rosen agree on", he writes in a leader column for the magazine, reflecting an ongoing disagreement between the secretary of state and the former children's laureate over the direction of English teaching in England's schools.