THE WAY HOME

A heavy-handed metaphor about the temptations of evil, Lucado creates a terribly scary, and indeed, almost evil story, with its vicious message that the only safe place for girls is cloistered. Anna is a princess, adopted by the King as an abandoned infant. She longs to know what is outside the castle walls in the forest, where she has heard the Lowlanders’ days are filled with fun. Her tutor Sir Henry and a fine young knight caution her against going forth (there are no women here except for the princess herself) but she is caught by warty, hunched Lowlanders who lure her to Olbaid (All Bad). He looks precisely like the traditional devil with horns and batwings. Her father dies for her, but rises up to show her the way home, opening a path in the forest back to the castle. So the deeply didactic message ends up being that girls have no place anywhere but locked away from experience, nature or curiosity, where they can be protected by men. A ghastly insult to any sort of true Christian sensibility. (Picture book. 5-8)