Why the Whales Came is a children's story written by Michael Morpurgo and first published in 1985 by William Heinemann (UK) and Scholastic (US). It is set on the island of Bryher, one of the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, in the year 1914. It was adapted into the 1989 film When the Whales Came. Source: Wikipedia (en)