Audiobook. A retelling of John Bunyan’s famous allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, by Geraldine McCaughrean (illus. Jason Cockcroft), read by yours truly a few months ago, now republished here.
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Technical Info
A Pilgrim’s Progress, Retold
by Geraldine McCaughrean, Illustrated by Jason Cockcroft
(c) 1999 Hodder Children’s Books
Winner of The Blue Peter Book Awards: “A Special Book to Keep for Ever” and the overall winner of the “Blue Peter Book of the Year”
Read by Darren J. de Lima in his Grandma’s old dining room in Wells, for absent friends.
Recording sessions 30 Oct, 31 Oct, 2 Nov 2021; Edited 4 Nov 2021. Republished here, on Of Machines and Men 01 Aug 2022.
Mastered in 320kbps MP3 using an Olympus DM-670 voice recorder, edited with MP3DirectCut to ensure no quality lost via re-encoding.
About A Pilgrim’s Progress, Retold
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory, a symbolic story of a Christian Everyman’s journey through life’s struggles and temptations until reaching Heaven.
It is a revered classic of English literature, alongside Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but suffers from similar problems to these other classics: Ye Olde Englyshe, which is a very different language to today, and requires effort and patience even for native speakers to understand.
Geraldine McCaughrean’s retelling of Pilgrim’s Progress is a very well-written tale I enjoyed as a child, having borrowed it from the local library to read in 2005 or so.
It is almost movie-like in its narrative and illustrations, entertaining and educational for both children and adults, and short enough.
You will become familiar with the gist of the original story, and be more able to enjoy it, should you ever read it.
For the moment, though, enjoy this allegory, and see if you can recognize the morals and Biblical references herein.
- DJDL
PS. If you wish to read this book, there’s digital copies on Archive.org and Z-Library. I used ABBYY Finereader 15 OCR Editor and Sigil to create the EPUB version you’ll find, from the PDF scans of the book from Archive.org. No direct links, though, so you’ll have to do a little bit of searching if you want it; there is no official Kindle copy as of writing.
Chapter summaries
01 A Pilgrim’s Progress, Retold - Intro & Dedication
The book cover blurb, awards, and dedication: “For St. Gabriel and all his angels”, “To Maria” and “For Ioana and Ioanica”.
02 Historical Foreword to A Pilgrim’s Progress, Retold
History of the original Pilgrim’s Progress and its author, John Bunyan.
03 Ch. 01 - The Great Escape
(The Beginning) In which I dream of Christian, and Christian dreams of escape
04 Ch. 02 - The Great Bog Misery
In which Christian gets bogged down and led astray
05 Ch. 03 - The Museum of Wonders
In which Christian knocks, and is shown some marvellous sights
06 Ch. 4 - The Hill
I which Christian sheds a great weight off his shoulders and meets some interlopers (The Your Story Hour audiobook version of Pilgrim’s Progress ends the story here)
07 Ch. 5 - Sleeping Lions
In which Christian’s courage is put to the test and he is obliged to turn back
08 Ch. 6 - Apollyon
In which Christian is given a suit of armour and finds great need of it
09 Ch. 7 - Vanity Fair
In which everything is for sale, and the pilgrims are asked to pay the price
10 Ch. 8 - Filthy Lucre
In which Hopeful is dazzled and Christian takes her to look over the brink
11 Ch. 9 - Doubting Castle
In which Christian and Hopeful are taken prisoner and taste the depths of Despair
12 Ch. 10 - The Door in the Hillside
In which the pilgrims reach the Delectable Mountains, like others before them
13 Ch. 11 - Ambush
In which Christian and Hopeful are ambushed, and meet a lifelong traveller
14 Ch. 12 - The Valley of the Shadow
In which the pilgrims cross enchanted ground and enter the most feared place of all
15 Ch. 13 - One More River
In which Christian and Hopeful sink or swim (The End)
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