Lamplighter Rare Collector Series

As part of my personal challenge to waken my kids for school each day by reading them a chapter from a book, I wanted to start reading Christian books only, something to get their minds focused on the right things at the start of their day. The most recent attempt was Jessica’s First Prayer (also a Lamplighter book), which they enjoyed for its simplicity and I enjoyed for its good morals and conversation starters. I had big hopes for The Giant Killer, but it was a little bit less loved.

The story itself it great. Two troublesome city boys (Adolphus and Constantine Probyn) have moved to the countryside to live with their preacher relative and his wife (Mrs. Roby) and their three children (Bertha, Aleck, and Laura). The Probyns are so ill-behaved that they bring fighting and unrest to this otherwise peaceful, disciplined, and gentle Christian home. In response to all the mess these children cause, Mrs. Roby decides to teach them some lessons in morality through an episodic tale of valor with Knight Fides and his missions to conquer the giants of the land.

Throughout his travels, Fides meets such fiends as Giant Selfishness, Giant Untruth, Giant Hate, and Giant Pride. He also meets kindly ladies like Conscience and Gratitude, while also eating fruit from the Tree of Forgiveness and making good use of the chord of Love. It really is a smart allegory and could enjoy a wider audience, if only it were updated to modern English. As it is, though, we found it pretty hard to digest.

Granted, this book was published in 1856, so pre-Civil War and thus in a language that’s most certainly outdated, but I had no inkling about how outdated it would be. It’s distractingly so, which is too bad, because this John-Bunyan-style story itself is quite ingenious and exciting! Here’s just one example of countless wordy sentences:

The succeeding day, which was the anniversary of the birth of Mrs. Roby, the children were permitted to make a picnic excursion to a thicket on Upland Hill; and as it lay at some distance from Dove’s Nest, a conveyance was hired to carry the party thither. (141)

It’s not impossible to understand, and it might be a literary slice of our heritage, but it’s wordy and annoying. The language of the characters too, at least in the epic story Mrs. Roby tells the children, has an ancient style that I didn’t always love reading. Fides says, for example, to the Giant Pride: “I do misdoubt thee sorely! Methinks thou art little like a champion of the Truth; how shall I know thee for one?” (178). I had to read that first bit twice just so I could understand it and it explain it to the kids!

I’ve never been a huge fan of the classics, mainly for the reasons just described. While it’s certainly healthy for kids to broaden their reading tastes, it’s counterproductive if doing so feels like work and they hate it. It could turn them off to reading anything “old,” and then they’ll miss the good stuff! It’s kind of like how watching one boring black-and-white film can turn them off to even the most wonderful old movies like Arsenic and Old Lace, Bringing Up Baby, It’s a Wonderful Life, or anything by The Marx Brothers.

This book was good, but it needs a healthy update to make it accessible to a broader audience. Not “dumbed-down,” please and thank you, but updated. It’s a great story and it needs some limelight.

©2023 E.T.