Howard Pyle was the first person in the modern era to collect all the Robin Hood ballads that had come down from the midieval era and put them into a modern format, structured as stories and so forth. Essentially every version of Robin Hood in the past century has drawn on Howard Pyle's Robin Hood as its major source, and reading this book is the best way to understand why the minor characters in (for example) Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" are named things like "Will Scarlet" or "Much the Miller's Son."

Children and adults will love "Otto of the Silver Hand," a wonderful book about honor and virtue in the Middle Ages. Otto, the young protagonist of the novel, proves that evil begets evil and good begets honor -- and above all that character does matter. This book is as captivating and beautiful as a knight in shining armor tale can be. It's a tale of love, courage, good and evil. The love begins between husband and wife with as much fervor and honesty as is felt in the movie "Braveheart" (Mel Gibson). Conrad, the baron of the Castle Drakenhausen whose love is so great for the Baroness...

Men of Iron is a coming-of-age story targeted towards adolescent boys. Though written over a century ago, Howard Pyle's book is excellent at conveying a code which should never fall out of fashion: honor, friendship, loyalty, honesty, respect towards women, and the singular pursuit of a worthwhile goal. The story itself concerns the rags-to-respectability transformation of Miles Falworth, a noble-minded young man who is tasked with repairing his family's unfairly tarnished reputation. The plot progression is three fights, all of which are distinguished from needless violence by being...