magic personified

This summer the kids and I have been getting books on tape to listen to in the car. As we run errands and drive to one practice or another we listen to parts of the story. It is a great distraction and for the most part they are silent. weird huh? Really the only time they speak is when they are telling one another to be quiet. We are currently listening to a story by Sarah Prineas called The Magic Thief. (click on the Author for the link to her website) It is a story about a boy who lives in a magical world with magicians, apprentices and magical creatures. The main character is named Conn. Conn is an orphan/gutter-boy who is pulled deeper and deeper into the magical mystery. We are currently on book 2 entitled Lost. This book Conn is exiled and is forced to uncover the mystery of the bad magic. The kids are really enjoying the book and we have time in between car trips to discuss our different theories and for a question and answer session. Emma tries desperately to keep up with the story-line and she does a really good job most of the time. The books are written for 3-6th graders. The vocabulary and the English accent do give her some troubles.

During dinner this evening Mark and Jack were discussing a particularly dramatic event in the book in which Conn is forced to confront the sorcerer king. During their confrontation the sorcerer king, who has complete faith in the bad magic, goes about trying to prove to Conn the magic will protect him. The imagery is beautifully written and the boys ate it up! Their banter back and forth in their own versions of an English accent is great fun to watch. And mostly in good humor. Tonight with the boys joking and quoting from the book, Emma obviously felt left out. She didn't hesitate though and jumped right into the banter with her brothers (and God Bless them they accepted her, a rare moment). Emma then starts talking about how the sorcerer king died because he was eaten by the magic. There was a great pause and everyone looked at her. That did not happen and we were quite confused. She noticed her error immediately back tracked and tried quickly to explain again. After several attempts to explain, she was adamant that she had heard correctly and we were all wrong, Jack figured it out. "Emma," he explained, "When they say 'the darkness swallowed him up' what they really mean was that he got so far away that you couldn't see him anymore." ohhh yeah, now I get it. Score one for Jack.