The Book of Three, the initial installment of The Chronicles of Prydain, a fabled five-volume series, was only Lloyd Alexander’s second novel, yet it permanently established him as a writer for adolescents whose work could be enjoyed with uninhibited and even critical pleasure by adult readers as well. Deriving their uncommon template from Welsh legends, The Book of Three and its sequels offer not only thrills, but humor and romance in delightful measure, providing a sense of human scale amid the fantastical doings that makes the characters’ extraordinary experiences relevant to the perilous real-life heroics of growing up.