The Arkadians

Short Review: a good single volume children's book from Lloyd Alexander. If you liked his Prydain or Westmark series then this will be familiar in style and characterization. This is really about exploring the idea of story telling and would make a good read aloud for elementary children.

The two main male and female leads are very reminiscent in character to Taran/Theo and Miggle/Eloway. The third character is a man that has been turned into a donkey (or jackass). The story uses lots of word play about that. So in some households this will be a reason to not read the book outloud. But there is lots of subtle humor for adults and good overt humor for the kids.

These are also moralistic stories in the best sense of the word. This is a book about teaching morals. And it is actually pretty good art as opposed to a lot of books that merely parrot moral ideas without the engaging stories.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/arkadians/