Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

The Chronicles of Prydain
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The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King
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Warning: Spoilers
We read The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron to each other a year and a half ago when we moved to Seattle for the summer, but didn't get around until this month to reading the remaining three books; which we would have read out loud to each other, but our public library has a shorter check-out time than any other library we've had - so we had a deadline.

I remember that Martin and Melissa both read this series when I was younger, but for some reason I never picked up Lloyd Alexander's books for youth until now. We really enjoyed all the books. Personally, I can see why The High King won the Newbery Award; I felt it was the strongest written in the series. It did happen to be my favorite, although there were some poignant points when reading Taran Wanderer.

These books were written during a terrible time in human history during the late 1960's when morality was at an all time low and responsible authority figures were no where to be found. In such a fascinating point in history, I found it amazing that Alexander would write a story about a boy who learned to face his inner demons of being a nobody, but not acting like a nobody because that was his station in life. What a fantastic and marvelous tale which so many people forget because they are so concerned about what their station in life is - there is a NEED for good assistant pig keepers in the world. Although, if I'm going to be blatant about writing a review of a book (and in the process spoil it for everyone), why did Taran have to become the High King?

I understand that it was a good conclusion to the story and if anyone could appropriately rule over the characters (in as much disarray as the commots were in) of Prydain, it would be Taran. But I liked Taran as an assistant pig-keeper and in the fourth book when I realized that he was only an assistant pig-keeper, it made who he really is stand out all the more.

Still, these books were wonderful to read and are definitely going to be a part of our collection.