Running Wild

Running Wild is a children's novel by the English writer Michael Morpurgo, published in 2009. It was adapted for the stage at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2016, and it is loosely based on an account of a girl who was saved from the tsunami of December 2004 by an elephant.

Will has been brought to Indonesia by his mother in an attempt to give him something other than his grief to think about. The holiday begins ordinarily enough, with a ride along the shore on an elephant whose behaviour the handler finds strange that morning, and Oona's refusal to enter the sea is the first sign that anything is out of the ordinary.

When she turns and runs inland, Will has nothing but the clothes he is wearing and the animal he is holding on to. What follows is the two of them in the jungle together, with Will learning how to live in a place he knows nothing about and with the knowledge that the life he had before is gone. The novel is about survival and about the relationship between a boy and an animal that has decided to look after him.