A Book A Week #48- King Arthur and His Court

I have mixed feelings about this book.  On the plus side, I cut my teeth on stories of King Arthur and this book would serve as a good introduction to some of the highlights of the stories.

On the negative side, this book only serves as an introduction to some of the highlights of the stories.

Greene was an Alabama author, so I vaguely remember hearing about her in Alabama history.  She was not as prolific as Truman Capote or Harper Lee, but evidently she was well read enough that Teddy Roosevelt mentioned this book as one of his boyhood favorites in his writings.  Keeping with early 20th century writing for kids, this book waters down a lot of stuff the author would rather not get into.  The problem is that some of these issues are central to the Aurthurian legends.

…Merlin, though not a bad man, was at one time persuaded to help the king do an evil deed.

That’s how the author describes the events leading up to the birth of Arthur.  That one sentence.  Now, I’m not advocating telling 6 or 7 year olds all the sordid details of Merlin using magic to make Uther look like another woman’s husband, but light shines best in darkness.  The author states she wrote this book (based on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King) to help preserve the ideas of chilvalry.  Chlvalry is no good if everyone in the world is chilvalrous.  I’m probably in the minority on this.  I also dislike a lot of Disney’s ‘fairy tales’ because they are watered down, sanitized versions of the original.  Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories” goes into this quite well.

In short, decent book, but it’s kind of like the sample scoop of ice cream at Baskin Robbins.  The little pink spoon only let’s you know if you want a bigger scoop.  Treat this book accordingly.