Little Pilgrim's Progress
Reviewed date: 2009 May 6
256 pages
The Pilgrim's Progress is hard to read. John Bunyan wrote a classic, but the English language has changed since he wrote over 300 years ago. It's hard enough for me--I gave up when I tried to read it a few years ago--but it's impossible for children. Fortunately, Helen Taylor has rewritten the story at a child's level. Her Little Pilgrim's Progress tells the same story in language children can understand.
I enjoyed Little Pilgrim's Progress when I read it as a child. My kids enjoyed hearing me read it to them. They are familiar with the story, and balked a bit when the story introduced Christiana and her younger brothers and sisters; they knew that in the real book, the young ones are Christiana's children. I'm not sure why Helen Taylor decided that in addition to simplifying the language, she also had to make the characters into children. Will children only read stories about children? I guess so.