David and the Phoenix came to me as a selection in the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club in the mid 1950's. I read it out there in the chicken house. It was a fun and fanciful adventure with plenty of suprises for a young child.

It was also the first book that made me cry, so touched was I at David's great love for his fiend. Like David, I felt alone. I had had a special friend, my father's hunting dog, who was lost. As I read the Phoenix I was touched by Divine Myth for the first time. Seeds of change were planted in my mind that day. There were hints of things more important than my own happiness, or even life itself. Freedom, Destiny, Rebirth, and Transformation are concepts that have developed from those slow-growing seeds. Through David's eyes, I met not a phoenix, but The Phoenix. He is there in all his glory. In all my studies of mythology since that time, I have never encountered so much richness and detail as in this story. The Phoenix tought David how life can go on after change and disappointment. His character forms a perfect circle of life beginning with the words,"vivo,vive,vives..." I live, he lives, you live.

I recommend this book for children and for adults with an interest in mythic imagination.