Join now to access our Study Guides library, which offers chapter-by-chapter summaries and comprehensive analysis on more than 5,000 literary works from novels to nonfiction to poetry. I think society today feels that books for children should be simple and easy, because children are not able to understand if the book is too long, uses complex language or perhaps may be too dense. Readers who know Arthur or are meeting him for the first time will delight in this beautiful rendering of one of the greatest stories of all time.

The Wart always seems good-natured: a familiar staple of English literature, a marginalised stepchild, always behaving decently and being eager to please. On a walk through the forest, Kay and Wart encounter Little John, Robin Hood, and Marian, learning of their band as well as the kidnapping of their friends, Dog Boy, Wat, and Friar Tuck. After he is crowned King, The Wart is given gifts from all over the world and from his friends—both animal and human.

After his clavicle heals, Merlyn later changes Wart into a badger, and then a wild goose that flies so high as to not be able to perceive national boundaries, a pacifist message.

Transformed by Merlyn into the forms of his fantasy, Wart learns the value of history from a snake, of education from a badger, and of courage from a hawk--the lessons that help turn a boy into a man.However, while Malory starts his book with the story of Uther and Igraine, White hardly mentions Arthur’s birth parents.

Also, the book is chock-full of dry humor, advanced and old-fashioned vocabulary, and literary and historical allusions that your child may need help with. His vivid, richly colored paintings capture a crowded London at Christmastime and magnificent knights jousting on the field of battle, as well as the legendary sorcerer Merlin and the magical sword that reveals Arthur's destiny. White's theme of power and justice ("Might Makes Right") seem to perfectly capture the political Zeitgiest of now.At the end of summer, Wart is turned into a snake and meets another snake who tells him the long narrative of his species. When asked why he did this by the rabbi, Elijah says he spared the poor man the loss of his wife while the repairs to the wall actually hid treasure from the rich man. It has a quaint drollery, and is full of facts about medieval times, which some may become immersed in.