My son likes knights, castles, and battles. My daughter likes animals, both anthropomorphic and not. Both of my kids like stories of children about their age or a little older, and both of my kids like magic and fantasy. I'm particularly fond of stories that come on audio discs that I can play in the car. Stories that grab the children's attention so I don't hear "how far is it now?" and "she touched me" rate even higher. So, with the above criteria, I chose Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke for a few car trips.
Igraine was a hit.
Both children sounded of "Story!" upon entering the car, instead of the traditional "I'm hungry."
What's the story about?
Igraine is a girl. When the story starts off, she is eleven, but her birthday is a couple of days off. Igraine wants to grow up and be a famous knight. She loves swordplay, stories of knights and chivalry, armor, and admiring knightly weapons. Igraine thinks magic is boring and tedious to memorize.
Igraine's family is magical. Mom is a beautiful sorceress and dad is a wizard. Her brother, who is a few years older, is in training to be a magician. Igraine has a talking cat. She snuck some red, magic powder from her brother and sprinkled it on the cat, and since then, he talks. Her brother loves mice, probably because he accidentally conjures many of them. The cat cannot eat the mice, or Albert (the brother) will turn the cat into a dog. Igraine's parents have magical singing books that help them with their spells.
Two important things happen at once to create the actual plot in the story. Firstly, a neighboring castle is conquered by an evil knight who wants the singing books. Secondly, while preparing her birthday present, Igraine's parent's perform a magical boo boo.
So, Igraine and Albert must fix everything. Albert holds the evil knight off with magic and Igraine goes on a knightly journey.
Potential topics of discussion
My kids ask me to pause stories a lot, because they have questions. The questions usually run the line of "could that really happen?" and "what does that word mean?" Igraine the Brave prompted several discussions with me and my children.
Knights
In the middle ages, boys of nobles, usually the second sons and such, went to train with knights, often at other castles. Boys would be pages as early as seven years old, and squires in their teens. (Some sources I've read say 11, 12, 13, and 14, so I'm just going with teens.) After training, a noble, king, or queen could dub the boy a knight at the age of 21.
How would you like to leave your parents at seven and start training?The Spartans in ancient Greece left their moms at a similar age to begin their training as warriors. Why don't we ship off our kids at this young age now?That's a lot of training. Do you want to train for a long time to be really good at something?What's chivalry? Do the ideas of chivalry presented in the book make sense? How would you change the definition?Can kids really do that?
Igraine is 12 in the story and she performs a lot of tasks normally reserved for grown ups. What tasks and jobs can kids do in our modern times to help their family and society?
Wouldn't it be cool if?
This is where the magic talk comes in. Wouldn't it be cool if our cat talked? What would he say? Do you think the dog loves me? If I could turn bad guys into fish, would I really do it?
I'm an engineer who quit full-time work and now freelance so I can homeschool my two children. I also teach science classes at a local homeschooling cooperative. As a temporarily retired engineer, I try to keep my brain active by reading, writing, and teaching. Check out the free resources, including unit studies, videos, tutorials, and little books at Unit Studies By Gwen or her blog at GwenOnline.
©2011, Gwen Nicodemus
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