a sudden disappointment in T. H. White

The Once and Future King has always been one of my favorite books. For those of you who haven't read it, you probably *have* heard of the first volume of it, The Sword in the Stone. You know, the one where the boy Wart learns a bunch of lessons from talking animals so that he can draw on those lessons to pull a sword out of a stone, after which people start calling him Arthur... and the rest of The Once and Future King is the whole rest of the Arthurian legend, told in readable style. So I have always admired T.H.White for his writing. Unfortunately, that has just been ruined, because in a used bookstore I ran across The Elephant and the Kangaroo. ( Herein lies the problem. )

As a side note, if you decide not to read White because of this, don't confuse T.H.White with E.B. White, who also wrote classic fantasy romps featuring talking animals, such as Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, not to mention co-authoring Elements of Style. And definitely don't confuse him with W.H. Whyte, who wrote another one of my favorite books, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, about how parks make cities livable. That one's not fiction, by the way, if that wasn't obvious.