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[bibliogramma]

Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison

What a wonderful find.

Mitchison’s part-fantastical, part-historical tale of a young girl named Halla, cast out by a wicked step-mother, mothered by bears, raised by dragons, taught to “travel light” by the Wanderer (he of the one eye and the two ravens), is a delightfully subversive story. Once she accepts that she cannot be a dragon, Halla encounters many people who have clear ideas of what she should be and what she should do, from the nasty hero who kills her guardian dragon Uggi and threatens to teach her “the way of women” (she escapes with the help of another of the dragons) to the priests and nobles of Micklegard (Constantinople) who want to use her gift for talking to animals to win money on the horse races, and later decide she belongs in a nunnery (she escapes with the help of a friendly Valkyrie), to the young man who decides that he wants to marry her.

But Halla has her own path to follow, and her own place in the world to find, and as long as she chooses to travel light – unencumbered by baggage of the physical kind, but also of the kind of expectations and assumptions and preconceptions that limit the ways one can learn and grow and adapt to change – she remains free to become herself.

The style is very plain and straightforward, the characters distinctly drawn and memorable, the message invaluable but never preached about.

I particularly enjoyed the bits about growing up with the dragons and coming to understand just how annoying and destructive those pesky heroes can be. Here's the dragonish take on the whole dragon-hunting fetish of so many heroes:

Kings and champions and heroes, unfairly armed with flame-resisting armour and unpleasant lances, were encouraged by certain underground elements and against the wishes and interests of the bulk of the population, to interfere between princess and dragon. Occasionally this resulted in tragedies, as in the case of the good dragon who was killed by the man George, or of the dragon so cruelly done to death by Perseus when about to make the acquaintance of Andromeda. It could be verified that no princess was ever asked whether she wanted to be rescued and carried off by a dragon-slayer to a fate (no doubt) worse than death.

I wish I’d known about this book when I was young.

Travel Light should be at least as well-known as a classic children’s novel as The Hobbit, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or A Wrinkle in Time. Please, if you have kids –especially girls, but boys too – in your life, give them this book.

Comments

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

It's just so... delightful. That's the best word I can think of for it.