The Forgetful Knight

Written by Michelle Robinson and Fred Blunt

Narrated by John Keating

This hilarious, Monty Python style sendup of the classic knight-and-dragon story comes with jaunty rhymes and a fabulous twist ending. Mischief! Mishaps! "Dragons!" Here's the story of an intrepid knight, only our narrator can't quite remember the details. Did that knight carry a sandwich, or a sword? Was he supposed to fight a cat, or a dragon? A hilarious and unpredictable adventure ensues, building through laugh-out-loud rhymes until, at last, the narrator remembers his own role at the center of all the marvelous madness. Fans of Jon Scieszka's "The Stinky Cheese Man," David Ezra Stein's "Interrupting Chicken," all of Patrick McDonnell's and Mac Barnett's picture books will love this zany read-aloud adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781501936159

Michelle Robinson

Michelle Robinson has written numerous picture book texts published in the UK and/or the US. She hoards cardboard, foil, and plastic bottle caps so her children can build their own robots and other creations. Her book There's a Lion in My Cornflakes won the Sainsbury's Children's Book Award for Best Picture Book in 2014. She lives in England with her family.

Reviews for The Forgetful Knight

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unreliable narrator tells the story of a knight who fights a dragon but seems to forget key details along the way.This is a very silly book that gets at the heart of storytelling. The simple tale of a knight's quest is well known, but it is presented in fits and starts as the narrator tries to recall the correct version of events and characters. Because it plays around with the traditional story arc, this book is best for older elementary school-age children. The illustrations are cartoonish but it works with this story and helps bring it to life.I could see this being used in a classroom setting for a unit on fairy tales as a fun twist on the genre alongside other fractured fairy tales such as David Wiesner's The Three Pigs and Mo Willems's Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs.

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A knight errant sets out on a quest in this humorous picture-book send-up of the classic tales of chivalry, finding that the story is continually changing all around him. He starts out on a horse, but is soon striding toward destiny - "Once upon an olden day / A knight in armor rode away. / Then again... / he had no horse. / Did I say "rode"? / He strode of course." - eventually fighting a dragon (or is it a cat?) with his sandwich (I mean, sword!). Both combatants die on the battlefield... or do they?I chuckled aloud on more than one occasion while reading Michelle Robinson's cleverly rhyming tale, with its stops and starts, corrections and retractions, and overall sense of fun. Fred Blunt's artwork in The Forgetful Knight reminded me a bit of the work of such illustrators as Quentin Blake and Tony Ross, and captures the madcap antics of the text wonderfully. I particularly liked his cat (of course), and his dragon. Recommended to anyone looking for fun new takes on the old quest-type tale, or for stories involving knights, dragons, and imaginative play.