Do you recall that summer afternoon you spread a blanket under a tree, laid out your snack of crackers stolen from the kitchen and opened up Don Quixote, whiling away the hours as old Don swashbuckled his way through the countryside?

What? You never made it through Don Quixote?

All right then. Let me try this again.

Do you recall that summer afternoon you spread a blanket under a tree, laid out your snack of frozen Ding-Dongs stolen from your mother’s stash (this is sounding better already, right?) and opened up The Canterbury Tales, whiling away the hours with those funny-talking pilgrims who entertained each other along their journey to . . .

What? You never made it through Canterbury Tales? Oh, you did, but it was for a college class. I see.

Yes, I see. Same for me.

Stories like that are why people turn to trashy airport paperbacks, aren’t they?

Well, can I convince you to try the genre one more time? Adam Gidwitz wrote something called The Inquisitor’s Tale and it might just be an improvement on the genre. In fact, it might work well read aloud to the kids.

It starts in an inn.

“The inn is packed. Butchers and brewers, peasants and priests, knights and nobodies. Everyone’s here to see the king march by. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see the children, too, and that dog of theirs. I would really like to see that dog.”

Some of this crew have seen “the children” and “that dog,” and they are willing to tell what they saw — in exchange for another round of ale, of course.

So they share their tales of Jeanne, Jacob, William and Gwenforte.

Jeanne is a peasant girl prone to fits and visions. You can imagine how well that goes over in the Middle Ages, when any strange behavior prompts people to label you a witch and dispose of you accordingly.

Jacob is a Jewish boy who flees his village right after his friendly neighbors torch the place.

William, dressed in monk’s robes, is the son of an African Muslim woman, who probably died in childbirth, and a warrior father, fighting to rid Spain of invading Mohammedans. Not that William has ever met these parents of his.

The children make their way across France, accompanied by Gwenforte, a greyhound dog so amazing that even a cat-lover like me enjoyed her scene-stealing ways.

“They continued to talk as they made their way through the forest. Their accents were unique. Jacob’s was inflected with the rhythms of the Hebrew Bible and the beit midrash where the men of his village studied and argued. William, on the other hand, spoke the high French of the monastery, which was infused with Latin. Jeanne’s speech was broad and flat like the fields her people tilled.”

The children dodge the monsters, over-eager knights and eventually the king himself. Oh, and wait until they meet the king’s mother.

There’s a lot going on in The Inquisitor’s Tale. I once dozed off just as the plot threads came together like beach traffic hurrying home on a Sunday night and I never really got my bearings again.

But I still had fun. The book is a little goofy, a little preachy. When they make the movie, it’s going to employ a whole lot of actors.

And it all wound up with a most satisfying finale.

Go ahead. Grab your blanket and your stolen snack and head out to the back yard. I’ll think you’ll make it through this book.

Don’t forget to check out Gidwitz’s research notes in the back.

Photo credits:

Knight: Daniel Mennerich on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Inn:  Daniel Mennerich on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Greyhound:  ay_lee_in on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Costumed man: One lucky guy on Visualhunt.com/ CC BY-NC-SA