Still, you can't deny that the boys go off to duel and do battle stuff, while the girls hang out with Aslan and go wake the trees. Sexism a little more present here, but not oppressive or malicious. We've been reading to him since he was six months old. (Also, keep in mind that my boy is extremely vocabulary. Maybe in a year or two, he would have been fine. (A vital plot point he couldn't get because it was only made explicit in this dialogue.)Īs a result, I had to skim, skip, or summarize big chunks of the book so he could get it. (Doubly archaic now, as Lewis wrote these 50 years ago.) My boy couldn't follow it at all, as there were 2-4 unfamiliar terms used in every sentence, and context can only stretch so far.) Because of that, Oot couldn't understand whole sections of the climax of the book, when the Telmarines were talking among themselves, and planning on betraying their king. It's not just unfamiliar language to children. (Because the siblings used to be kings and queens, and they're talking with the nobility of the Telemarines.) Later, Lewis splits the party in a way that divides the action in the story.īut the biggest issue is that the characters lapse into archaic, courtly English when the a bunch of the people are talking at the end of the book. The first issue was the non-linear story. I think the biggest reason for this, was that it wasn't as accessible to him. It's a good book, and he enjoyed it, but didn't ring the bell in the same way Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe did. I read this aloud to my older boy, age 6.
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