Great Read Aloud

Today we read, as suggested by MacBeth on a 4Real thread, George MacDonald's The Light Princess.The copy we borrowed from the library was illsutrated by William Pene duBois (of Twenty-one Balloons fame).

The Light Princess is a wonderful read-aloud -- I read it in a bit over an hour -- for the littles. Seems a princess has a problem with gravity (now wouldn't that be a cool rabbit trail to follow?) and a prince has to save her. There are good guys and bad guys -- particularly an old witch of an aunt who doesn't play nice, but who does knit:

She left the snake hanging, and sat down on a great stone, with her black
cat by her side. Then she began to knit and to mutter awful words. The snake
hung like a huge leech, sucking at the roof; the cat stood with his back arched,
and his tail like a piece of cable, looking up at the snake; and the old woman
sat and knitted and muttered. (page 26)