The First Chronicles Of Prydain

My teacher read this to my class in sixth grade, but I'd forgotten 99 percent of it. That one percent stuck with me for decades and I decided to give it another look last week.

I'm not a big fantasy fan and kids' books usually leave me cold, but I thought this was a great book. Alexander's writing is simple but has enough details to give the world some flavor. He never lets the story get bogged down, and a really decent philosophy comes through:

Be kind to everyone and everything that isn't actively trying to kill you. Help where you can. Don't refuse help from others. And from a bonus story in the back of the 50th Anniversary edition: “It is better to be raising things up than smiting things down.”