The Queen wanted to watch what?

In picking out a movie today, I was surprised by The Queen's picks: Much Ado About Nothing, Ivanhoe, or Emma. And she's only six!

We aren't Shakespeare buffs. We sometimes need subtitles to make out what they're saying. We aren't classical buffs either. Purring Piggy and I sometimes stumble over Olde English when reading aloud, and we use our dictionary often. But what we are, is lovers of literature and lovers of learning.

When we see the word "trothplighted", we don't fall on our knees, cover our heads with our hands, and mutter "don't know what it means, this book is too hard." When we don't understand who is who ("So Rosalind is dressed up as a boy, dressed up as a girl?"), we don't drop whatever we're reading with a "I knew I couldn't read Shakespeare". We look it up, we find a summary, we do research. And we like doing it. Don't ask me how we got to this point, because I don't know (other than my mom did lots of hands on and tons of reading, rather than notebook work, when we were young), but we love to learn.

We have found the joys of using "perjure" after finding out that it means "lying under oath", or saying "I would my horse had the speed of your tongue". It's fun to find out things that you didn't know before! Isn't it cool that everyone in England has a title (from "Baron" to "Esquire")? Isn't it cool that Jane Austen quotes Aristotle? Isn't it cool that guinea pigs purr when they love you?

And this joy is not just for older children. From the anecdote I mentioned at the start of this, some may wonder how on earth we got a six year old girl to like Ivanhoe, of all things. We drilled them for hours and hours, of course. Ha, no. We didn't do anything, actually. What happened was this:

We are a family, and we do almost everything as a family, including watching movies. We actually watch "big kid" movies...with the little kids! Voila! And after being exposed to "big kid" movies many many times, it just so happens that the "little kids" start to...like them.

I was surprised by The Queen. But however surprised I was, I had a warm fuzzy feeling inside, too (not to mention the relief that we'd watch a movie that I liked, too ;)