EandCmom,
I think it needs to be added that �The Once and Future King� has a small bit of �adult content� � the Lance and Guinevere thing. I would not be comfortable with eight-year-olds reading it (I�d be very comfortable with fourteen-year-olds reading it).
It is an absolutely fantastic book. It�s actually a brilliant essay on ethical and political philosophy � Wart was changed by Merlyn into all of the different animals so that he would understand the distinctive nature of homo sapiens and the implications of that nature for human ethics and politics. First, you read TOAFK and then you read Locke�s �Second Treatise on Civil Government� and Thoreau�s �Essay on Civil Disobedience� and then some modern writings in the same tradition (Rothbard�s �The Ethics of Liberty,� Friedman�s �Machinery of Freedom,� etc.)
White actually lays out all of this rather explicitly in �The Book Of Merlyn,� a collection of �out-takes� that he, wisely in my judgment, finally decided not to include in TOAFK.
I absolutely agree that �The Once and Future King� is a �must-read�: it�s not just an entertaining book, it�s �literature� in the classic sense that helps illuminate history, psychology, and, as they used to say, �the human condition.� If you really want to �get� what Aristotle meant when he said that humans are �the rational animal� or what Jefferson meant when he declared that certain truths were �self-evident,� well, White figured out how to turn Jefferson and Aristotle into entertaining fiction. If only our Presidential candidates had read and understood �The Once and Future King�!
Dave
