Scan barcode
A review by bluestjuice
Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
3.0
Read this to help facilitate my fourth-grader's pseudo-homeschooling curriculum, which is Torchlight level 2 - this book is the first literature offering and ties into the central themes of medieval history and legend. My reviews will definitely be geared to my experience co-reading this with a kid.
Altogether I thought this was a pretty satisfactory piece of early-elementary medieval fantasy. It features a courageous and determined heroine who aspires to be a knight, despite belonging to a family of powerful magicians. I appreciated throughout that the writing was reasonably wholesome without lacking conflict - as an example, although Igraine and her family have very different approaches to the world, they also work together as a team and her parents and brother are shown even from the beginning as being supportive of her interests when they spend a lot of time creating her a magical suit of armor for her birthday.
The book touches on some generic messages like 'let everyone play to their own strengths' but it also allows the characters to wrestle with more thorny ethical dilemmas such as 'how long should one keep trying when one has failed repeatedly?' and 'how should one treat people you are at war with?' There are also whimsical details like the singing magic books and the talking cat to help entertain, although I was unmoved by those particular elements. I appreciated the mentor relationship between Igraine and the Sorrowful Knight, as well as the dynamic between her and her brother Albert and her parents, a lot more.
I wasn't blown away by this, but it gets a solid 3 star rating from me for featuring a solid female protagonist and better-than-average storytelling for books at this reading level. I don't think it captured my kid's imagination much (she didn't really bring it up outside of our planned discussion times the way she does other books and topics she is interested in), but she did opt to read the whole thing in two days as opposed to the 10 days it was slated for in the curriculum. I had to scramble to catch up with her. So she probably didn't hate it too much...
Altogether I thought this was a pretty satisfactory piece of early-elementary medieval fantasy. It features a courageous and determined heroine who aspires to be a knight, despite belonging to a family of powerful magicians. I appreciated throughout that the writing was reasonably wholesome without lacking conflict - as an example, although Igraine and her family have very different approaches to the world, they also work together as a team and her parents and brother are shown even from the beginning as being supportive of her interests when they spend a lot of time creating her a magical suit of armor for her birthday.
The book touches on some generic messages like 'let everyone play to their own strengths' but it also allows the characters to wrestle with more thorny ethical dilemmas such as 'how long should one keep trying when one has failed repeatedly?' and 'how should one treat people you are at war with?' There are also whimsical details like the singing magic books and the talking cat to help entertain, although I was unmoved by those particular elements. I appreciated the mentor relationship between Igraine and the Sorrowful Knight, as well as the dynamic between her and her brother Albert and her parents, a lot more.
I wasn't blown away by this, but it gets a solid 3 star rating from me for featuring a solid female protagonist and better-than-average storytelling for books at this reading level. I don't think it captured my kid's imagination much (she didn't really bring it up outside of our planned discussion times the way she does other books and topics she is interested in), but she did opt to read the whole thing in two days as opposed to the 10 days it was slated for in the curriculum. I had to scramble to catch up with her. So she probably didn't hate it too much...