O mother, thy teacher

Emily is reading Alice in Wonderland. The new movie is coming out this weekend and she totally wants to see it (as do I). Her only notion of Alice in Wonderland to date is the Disney version, so she's reading the book in an effort to be fair to the author, before seeing another adaptation.
She was reading on the way to school this morning and mentioned she was getting close to finishing.

"Wow" I said, "you read that pretty quickly"

E: "Yeah, although some of it is a little hard to understand"

Me: "I know, but it was written back when people spoke a little differently. It's good for you to get used to wrapping your mind around a different way of speaking. In high school you'll have to read Shakespeare and that was written like 500 years ago, so some people find it very difficult to understand"

Damien pipes up: "we get to read a 500 year old book!"

Me: "well, the words were written 500 years ago, but the books are reprinted all the time"

D: oh

Me: (getting back to the point) Like in Romeo and Juliet she says "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" which pretty much just means "Where are you?"

Emily: (laughing) "I'm going to start saying that.....Wherefore thou..

Me: Wherefore ART thou...

Emily: Oh yeah....Where art....what is it again?

Me: Wherefore art thou.... another one is at the end Juliet says "Oh happy dagger, this is thy sheath"....right before she stabs herself"

Damien: Weird

Emily: Romeo and Juliet is weird, she thinks he's dead, so she kills herself and then he sees that she's dead and kills himself

Me: Actually it's the other way around, he thinks she's dead, kills himself and so on.
Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays though, not just Romeo and Juliet. Another famous one is called Hamlet"

Damien: That sounds like a breakfast....like ham omelette


Haha, go to school my children, literary lesson is over for the morning. I can see how homeschooling would go in my house.