Disney Introduction to the Magic of Camelot

by Katie-Anne Gustafsson | More from this Blogger

27 Feb 2007 03:52 AM

A few days ago I read a movie review here at families.com that brought a memory back from this summer. Being a twin-culture family, we live in one country but spend our summers in the other so that our boys get to experience both of their cultural roots. We live in Sweden but every July we spend a month in the UK at my mom's holiday trailer on the Northumbrian coastline (North East corner of England). Some friends knew we were coming last year, and left a pile of Disney videos at the trailer ready for the boys to watch before bed. One of these was The Sword in the Stone, the subject of the movie review I read.

Disney tends to take several liberties with history. Occasionally it rewrites it, but mostly it just glosses over huge areas in order to create a short story. Most importantly, what it does is to plant seeds of interest into curious little minds - such as that which my 6 year old has! With the Sword and the Stone, I happened to mention that this story was partly true, and that Arthur did become King, and that he lived in a castle called Camelot which had a round table where the King's knights would sit. This captured Jake's imagination and we then spent many hours talking about Camelot and the knights. I did warn him that although much was written about King Arthur, Camelot and even Merlin (who featured in the Sword and the Stone) there was a lot of it that couldn't be proven. We also discussed that there were people who today still searched for the castle remains of Camelot, and that despite there not being much evidence, there was enough fact remaining to prove that at some point in time, a King Arthur did rule England. Months later, Jake's still fascinated by the story which is very exciting for me because I've long hoped that both of my boys inherit my passion for history and this was the first indication that at least one of them has!

Despite Disney's positive and magical look at the story, the Sword and Stone lays a great foundation for active imaginations that want to learn more. We now have Disney's version of Pocahontas on video and I hope to help Jake discover that in here too is a lot of fact packaged up in Disney wrapping paper.

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Learn more about Katie-Anne Gustafsson

Hi,I'm a work at home mom of 2 preschoolers, Jake and Connor, and wife to Mikael.

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