Tuesday, February 16, 2010

"Half Magic" by Edward Eager, a list in prose of great children's* literature available in the '50's

*Where "children's literature" means any book that will appeal to children.

And we own most of the books he's listed. "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", "The Once and Future King", the Narnia books, the E. Nesbit books...

MM is thrilled.
"Do we have that one, Mommy? What about that one? WOW! THOSE books are on MY shelf! When did you get that one for me?"

"Well, to be honest, I bought those for me, and that one was mine when I was a kid. And so was that one. And this one. And all the Narnia ones, MakesBooksForGrandkids brought back from England for me when he used to go on business trips when I was small. And Boy! I used to get in trouble at school because I would spell words the way they appear in those books, and here in the States, we spell things differently from the way they do there."

"Cool! So can we read this one next?"

"Of course!"

6 comments:

susan said...

We're reading Half Magic right now--in the middle of chapter 3! It's way fun.

Yankee, Transferred said...

The Five Little Peppers!

Liz Miller said...

Susan! What a terrific coincidence!

Genevieve said...

Love Half Magic (and the Peppers et al), but even more so, I love Seven-Day Magic and Knight's Castle.

susan said...

Half Magic is way fun, although I also have to say it's way dated (the evil Arab, the way it's always the boy who comes up with the right wishes in the nick of time, the sense that boys don't have emotions to display.....I'm editing a fair bit as I read). How do you deal with those things as you read together?

Liz Miller said...

I'm not editing it much at all, except to say, "I don't think there's anyone really like that"

MM identifies with all the child characters, girls as well as boys so I'm happy with that.