What All Teenagers Should Read: Part 3

Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea

In my continuing exploration of what all teenagers should read before they are sixteen, I’ve so far looked at C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien: scholars, and friends, their imaginary worlds are also a means of expressing deeply conservative ideas.

Lewis’ joyful Christianity, and Tolkien’s rooted love of language, history and myth, and of England itself, render their fantasies solid, real even. Both books have permeated the psyches of generations: I’ve yet to meet a child who hasn’t looked in the back of a wardrobe after reading the Narnia books, desperate to find a snowy landscape; or one who isn’t tickled by the idea of hobbits living in the hills. (And if they haven’t, or aren’t: then there’s not much hope for them.)

Fantasy is, of course, also a means of expressing other ideologies, and Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) is quietly radical. I loved this book as a child, when I first read it around the age of 11; and I have read it many times since then. Like all great books, it reveals more of itself each time, its mythological and literary resonances glittering like the spells of the wizards Le Guin so beautifully depicts.