As a young man growing up with a drunken father and a broken home, Taran helped guide me to adulthood. An amazing tale so well told! I found and keep a copy in my home to this day!
I’m 33, but didn’t know about this series until nearly a year ago, or whenever after Disney+ came out, and my wife forced me to sit down and watch the old Disney flick “The Black Cauldron.” At that time, I heard in an interview/Q&A with my favorite author Jim Butcher (author of The Dresden Files), and so I found “The Book of Three” by Lloyd Alexander and was immediately interested. I can see the magic and appeal of this book series. I feel like Tolkien’s ingenious Legendarium might be a bit too high-brow and advanced for young children, but definitely worth sticking with as you get older-of course-but Alexander does feel like his “Prydain” is like a gateway to Tolkien, significant for children, and it can help inspire a young mind to want to work and struggle and take on responsibility, which isn’t something we see often. Like at work I hear a Christmas Carol on the radio it’s all about what toys the singer wants, out of self-entitlement. That just feels regressive in the concept of maturity. Alexander paints this portrait of this heroic life of Taran, and that’s inspiring for a child who wishes things weren’t so hard, but it helps you to face those hardships and to move forward. Its ending feels like the opposite to “The Lord of the Rings,” bc the hero Frodo and the hero from “The Hobbit” are both granted paradise by traveling to the Undying Lands, but in “The High King,” Taran stays in Prydain to help make it a better world, and Eilonwy says she will stay with him. That just feels like a very motivational and mature ending. I’m not talking crap about Tolkien’s work, bc to just call it intelligent isn’t quite doing it justice, bc Tolkien invented an entire language, mythology, history, and these incredible stories, and I can’t praise it enough, but it feels like Alexander’s took a different approach to it. Sure, it’s not as intelligent, but from a psychological perspective and the development of a child’s mind, there were some lessons that he was teaching children without inventing a language or mythology. Neither are better or worse than the other, but they’re different in that regard.
No, Lloyd Alexander provided a pronunciation guide to Michael O Tunnell for his book "The Prydain Companion". In it, the pronuciation given for Prydain is "prih-DANE". Tunnell wrote the following regarding the difference in pronunciation between the original Welsh words and their fictional counterparts: "The pronunciation aids were provided by Lloyd Alexander, who advises us that they are not necessarily true to the Welsh tongue. Many sounds in the Welsh language are simply not available in English. Alexander (1985b) does not want the Welsh words to be a stumbling block for readers of the Prydain Chronicles and has therefore made the pronunciations as simple as possible." Prydain is certainly based on Wales and Welsh folklore, but it is still a fictional place with fictional pronunciations for these things.
As a young man growing up with a drunken father and a broken home, Taran helped guide me to adulthood. An amazing tale so well told! I found and keep a copy in my home to this day!
I’m 33, but didn’t know about this series until nearly a year ago, or whenever after Disney+ came out, and my wife forced me to sit down and watch the old Disney flick “The Black Cauldron.” At that time, I heard in an interview/Q&A with my favorite author Jim Butcher (author of The Dresden Files), and so I found “The Book of Three” by Lloyd Alexander and was immediately interested. I can see the magic and appeal of this book series. I feel like Tolkien’s ingenious Legendarium might be a bit too high-brow and advanced for young children, but definitely worth sticking with as you get older-of course-but Alexander does feel like his “Prydain” is like a gateway to Tolkien, significant for children, and it can help inspire a young mind to want to work and struggle and take on responsibility, which isn’t something we see often. Like at work I hear a Christmas Carol on the radio it’s all about what toys the singer wants, out of self-entitlement. That just feels regressive in the concept of maturity. Alexander paints this portrait of this heroic life of Taran, and that’s inspiring for a child who wishes things weren’t so hard, but it helps you to face those hardships and to move forward. Its ending feels like the opposite to “The Lord of the Rings,” bc the hero Frodo and the hero from “The Hobbit” are both granted paradise by traveling to the Undying Lands, but in “The High King,” Taran stays in Prydain to help make it a better world, and Eilonwy says she will stay with him. That just feels like a very motivational and mature ending. I’m not talking crap about Tolkien’s work, bc to just call it intelligent isn’t quite doing it justice, bc Tolkien invented an entire language, mythology, history, and these incredible stories, and I can’t praise it enough, but it feels like Alexander’s took a different approach to it. Sure, it’s not as intelligent, but from a psychological perspective and the development of a child’s mind, there were some lessons that he was teaching children without inventing a language or mythology. Neither are better or worse than the other, but they’re different in that regard.
Best book series ever written
Thank you, Lloyd.
dude, this is cool
its PRR-UH-DIE-NN...the cornish-welsh term for britain
No, Lloyd Alexander provided a pronunciation guide to Michael O Tunnell for his book "The Prydain Companion". In it, the pronuciation given for Prydain is "prih-DANE".
Tunnell wrote the following regarding the difference in pronunciation between the original Welsh words and their fictional counterparts:
"The pronunciation aids were provided by Lloyd Alexander, who advises us that they are not necessarily true to the Welsh tongue. Many sounds in the Welsh language are simply not available in English. Alexander (1985b) does not want the Welsh words to be a stumbling block for readers of the Prydain Chronicles and has therefore made the pronunciations as simple as possible."
Prydain is certainly based on Wales and Welsh folklore, but it is still a fictional place with fictional pronunciations for these things.
Multi-book……………………………….story . Lolz 😂