Dec. 5, 2006
Three Cheers for Elizabeth Kay, author of the Divide series
My nine-year-old son, Mario, and I have been having a fantastic time reading the Divide and now Back to the Divide. These books tell the adventures of and English boy named Felix in an alternate world where unicorns, pixies, griffins and elves are real and people are mythical. The books are entertaining for children but also very literate and funny for adults. I just finished a very funny section in Back to the Divide, where a female griffin, Thornbeak, is reading an English newspaper and is discovering with horror how low-brow it is. "The front page is all about the results of a game of something called football. The second page is about some singers in short skirts. It's only as we get further in that there's a report about an earthquake and a scientific breakthrough. Am I missing something? Is football a way of settling international disputes, perhaps?" she asks. Thornbeak continues to consider the paper in shock and asks if perhaps television is directed toward people of higher intelligence. Felix explains about soaps and reality shows, getting more and more embarrassed. Thornbeak asks, "Is this what mass communications lead to, Felix? Worldwide brain death?" I'm not sure Mario got the joke, but I loved it. However, the stories do not usually focus on such matters. They are usually about Felix's death-defying adventures in this alternate universe, in which he flies on dragon's backs and struggles against evil elves.