Augie and the Green Knight
Year: 2014
Author: Zach Weinersmith
Length: 219 pages
While I’m slowly getting into the deep and thorough lore of the Arthurian legend, one story that seems to be popular in the cultural zeitgeist is the one about the Green Knight. I haven’t seen the recent The Green Knight (2021) movie adaptation yet, but I’m definitely aware of its overarching story due to the middle-grade book Augie and the Green Knight. It’s clear from some of the review snippets I’ve seen for the movie that the logic of the tale doesn’t hold up to today’s standards, an issue that Augie and the Green Knight thoroughly explores.
This book follows Augie, a precocious girl who is definitely smarter than her years—even at the cost of the credulity of the story. When she finds herself transported into the mythical world of the Green Knight, she is unfazed by the peculiar world. The plot unfolds as it always does in this story, except that Augie tries to use logic to help save Sir Gawain. The progression of the “rules” that Augie puts in place to create a civilized society gets some pushback from the Green Knight, who has a logic all his own, often to comedic effect.
As a middle-grade book, Augie and the Green Knight is a fairly easy read. However, it still contains a few extremely complicated logic puzzles that even adults might have trouble comprehending. The illustrations contained in this book are top-notch and definitely capture the essence of these characters. Still, the common failings of this genre are present in this book, including bathroom humor and a few too many self-aware winks at the parents who are likely reading this to their children. Overall, though, Augie and the Green Knight is a cute take on an inherently violent legend.
An attempt to fix the logic of the Green Knight legend, I give Augie and the Green Knight 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
