So of course I immediately hit Amazon and bought one copy each of Lilith and Phantastes for my 16-year-old son, the budding writer who is working on his first novel.
I love being a homeschooler.
What a fabulous education you are giving your child!
“I love being a homeschooler.”
I understand what you mean. We are in Central America and I’m mentoring several young men in appropriate technology skills. English is taught in school here. One young man said that he did not like to read. I mentioned the joy of good books and re-reading them over the years.
I had my Android phone with me (as data storage) and pulled up Kipling. The young man was not familiar with Kipling, but had seen parts of the Disney movie of The Jungle Book. First I gave a synopsis of “The Miracle Of Puram Bhagat” from the Second Jungle book then read the last few pages.
Then I started on the Mowgli stories from the First Jungle Book. My the time I finished reading the first chapter to him, he was hooked!
Get your hands on The Princess and Curdie by MacDonald. It's the sequel to The Princess and the Goblins by the same author, though I didn't enjoy Goblins half as much as I enjoyed Curdie. The latter is a work fairly ringing with warning (and, if one could dare say it, prophecy) relevant to our own age and current state of civilization, though I can't say whether MacDonald had any such conscious intentions of doing this (though he may well have done). Certain British authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and this would include GK Chesterton) seemed to be at least vaguely aware that some sort of dreaded sea-change was taking place in western civilization, and that its Ruin was then well within sight on the horizon unless something were done.
That aside, it's a good fantasy-adventure story on its own,