The Funke story is the longest I have yet read to J. He really, really liked it, and his attention did not flag at any point. It was the kind of story he would often bring up at random, just because he is thinking about the characters.
The Ende story also continued to amuse and delight to the end. As for the coded critique of Nazism I mentioned here, it more or less amounted to the fact that the dragons are obsessed with their "racial" purity. Ok. I duly pointed this out to and discussed briefly with Jamie. In this connection I found it interesting that the really evil dragon, Frau Mahlzahn, is redeemed at the end and transformed into a good dragon. So obviously the critique of Nazism is quite shallow ... unless we imagine that Ende is saying that Nazis—Nazi leaders—were capable of total redemption. Seems doubtful. In any case, I look forward to the next installment in this series as well as more stories by Ende.
I was excited to get to Odysseus, but although J seemed interested at the beginning, he freaked when the cyclops devours one of Odysseus's crew and wanted to stop. We'll revisit in several months.
My wife started reading King Arthur stories with J, which he really likes. Our audiobook tracks his English book quite closely, so I've been having J give a quick summary of the chapters as he hears their German titles before we listen.
2016
Total audio: 6.54
Total video: 0 (uncounted)
Age 6.04.3
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