So You Want to Raise a Medievalist

Sure, there are classic books like the Lord of the Rings (Seth Lerer did a brilliant MLA paper a few years ago on Gandalf as philologist that made me realize my own career was set in place by my sixth grade reading). But then again Tolkien's opus is now on DVD, and who reads when they can watch a DVD?

A book that my son highly recommends -- and that I must admit that I'm getting all kinds of guilty pleasure from reading myself -- is Nancy Farmer's Sea of Trolls. Set on the northeast coast of England during Viking days, the story reworks Beowulf, among many other medieval stories. And where else can your kid read a novel in which some of the dialogue is in Old Icelandic -- and LIKE IT?