Library Kids vs. Morgana le Fay

At tonight’s meeting, we read a story in which King Arthur meets the evil Morgana le Fay. We talked about how we know she is evil because an evil light is in her eye, and because she keeps secrets from her husband. I foreshadowed some upcoming legends by telling them that Arthur will confront Morgana again. I asked them what they would do if they confronted Morgana le Fay. I’ve reconstructed the following story from a battle plan created by Sir Eli, Sir Sahid, Sir Ty, and Sir Wes. My goal is to get the kids to tell me more stories so we can lay the groundwork for some creative writing games...I mean, exercises.

We would call King Arthur, and the authorities, and the Ghostbusters. If she was alone, we would tackle her into submission with our sheer brute force.

If she had an army, we would assemble our own army. We would use golden weapons with power and lasers to fight her. We would stick a watermelon on her head so she could not see. We would throw smoke bombs, electricity bombs, and ninja stars at her. We would also put her in a maze so she can’t find her way out.

We Found the Lady's Pond!

I'm using this book club as a stealth means of teaching the kids history and geography. With this goal in mind, I decided to have the kids draw fantasy maps of where they think the lady's pond should be.

First I gave each child a map I had made to illustrate King Arthur's realms. I traced some maps of Great Britain, Ireland, and France together, and labeled them with the place names mentioned in the legends. For instance, "Brittany" was labeled as "Armorica," and I showed them the approximate locations of Gwynedd and Powys in Wales. (I say "approximate" because I put Powys a little too far south. My apologies to my Welsh friends, Lee and Felicity Waters!) I had great fun making the maps look antique by smearing them with my tea bags. I drink a lot of tea, so this task did not take long.

Once I had made my maps, I printed a copy of an antique map showing ships and sea monsters in the seas surrounding Wales. Mad props are due to the National Library of Wales, which had some great images I borrowed. You can explore the NLW's collections here: http://www.llgc.org.uk/. I encouraged the kids to follow the examples and create their own fantasy maps of the Lady of the Pond's realms.

In addition to sneaking some history and geography lessons into an art lesson, I am preparing these kids for their destinies as readers of fat fantasy novels with maps on the endpapers. Who knows, maybe some of the kids will get jobs as illustrators. You can say you saw their work here first:

The Lady Illuminated

Many people associate King Arthur with the Middle Ages because legends about him became very popular during that era. However, the legends about King Arthur actually date back to the fifth and sixth centuries C.E., when Britain was invaded by Saxons from the European continent. King Arthur may be based on a British warrior who fought the invading Saxons. For now, the King Arthur Book Club is exploring the medieval world through these timeless legends.

We recently learned about illuminated manuscripts and their role in medieval times. Illuminated manuscripts are richly decorated documents that preserve texts that medieval people valued. Many of them are religious texts, such as the books of the Bible. The Lindsfarne Gospels are among the most well-known illuminated manuscripts. To view sample pages from the Lindsfarne Gospels online, visit this page on the British Library's website: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/Results.asp

The beauty of these documents inspired us to create illuminated manuscripts about The Lady of the Pond. You can view our manuscripts here!