The Sword in the Stone

[redbird]

cattitude read me T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone, at a chapter or part-chapter at a time, before bed. We finished last night (the very last chapter is short, so he folded it in with the penultimate).

Basically, this is the story of King Arthur's upbringing and education. In this version, he's fostered by Sir Ector, lord of the Forest Sauvage; everyone knows that Ector's son, Kay, will become a knight, and Arthur, called "Wart", won't, but gets basically the same education. There's some discussion, early, of what sort of education to give the boys, and whether the roads are safe enough to send them to Eton--and then Wart goes out and finds Merlin to be their tutor.

Many adventures are had. The story wanders back and forth across time; late in the book the narrative voice says something like "in the fifteenth century, or whenever it was"--horribly late for Arthur, and late for Robin Hood, Marian, and all, who the boys have a fine adventure with and who wander back into the story occasionally. The entire thing is a festival of anachronism: not only are the characters pulled from various points of English legend, but there's no definable tech level, and just about everyone talks like late Victorian or Edwardian English people, down to complaining about the Bolshevists. It's deliberate and effective humor, not the bad anachronism of an author who doesn't realize that the past is a foreign country.

White does a good job with the characters. I particularly like Merlin, Wart, Archimedes, and the Questing Beast, and have been getting fonder of Sir Ector as the story proceeds. On the other hand, I keep interrupting the story to make rude remarks about some of the characters, notably King Pelenor, who should have more sense in a variety of ways.

The book ends at a tournament, held as a combination of festival-for-its-own-sake and to seek the heir of the dead king Uther Pendragon. Kay has just been knighted and Wart is now formally his squire: Kay forgets his sword, sends Wart after it, wacky hijinks ensue, and Wart discovers that he's to be king, a thought that fills him rather with dismay than glee.


Now we need to select a next reading-aloud book: even if we had it, Cattitude informs me that The Once and Future King isn't nearly as good.

(I'd thought of going back and editing my previous post, but disabling comments means I can't get to the "edit post" page.)

Edited to add: Thanks for all the suggestions; a necessary qualification is "something Cattitude has already read", so we're probably better off with old favorites than with anything new or obscure.

Comments

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

Depending on whether you're staying with F&SF, and whether you're sticking with nominally-children's books (I tend to consider certain books "for children of all ages"), I might suggest:

The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper (Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King, and Silver on the Tree.

Pretty much anything by Robin McKinley. The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword might make better reading-aloud fodder than other works such as Deeerskin. I also recommend her The Outlaws of Sherwood to you as the retelling of the Robin Hood story which I enjoy the most, and which stubbornly insists on being canonical in my head.

Most anything by Tamora Pierce. I recommend the Tortall series (Song of the Lioness quartet, the Immortals quartet, the Protector of the Small quartet, the Trickster duo [the first of which is newly released]) over the Winding Circle books (Magic Circle quartet, The Circle Opens quartet); although the latter are reasonably good, they aren't as good as the former.

At least the first three of the Wizardry books by Diane Duane (So You Want to be a Wizard?, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry). There are more books in the series, and I've enjoyed them, but I haven't known them as long so I'm not as certain recommending them.