Mommy, Can We Go to Narnia Tonight? (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis)

Member Name: ladybahnsidhe

Product:	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Date:	01/03/01 (210 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Magical fantasy, high adventure

Disadvantages: Perhaps a bit moralistic for today's cynical children -- but is a little idealism a bad thing?

My love affair with C.S. Lewis began over thirty years ago when I was eight years old, a quiet, shy child who lived in a world of books and imagination. One day, on the shelves of the classroom that served as our school library, I discovered the key to another world in a dog-eared, ragged hard-cover book with the unprepossessing title, "Prince Caspian's Island". It was covered in a yellowed cellophane bookwrap, and looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. I opened it to read the bookflap... three hours later, I had managed to walk through the halls, my classes and all the way home without ever closing the book. It wasn't till years later that I learned to my delight that "Prince Caspian's Island" was one of a series of seven and dived into the first, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" hoping against hope that the magic I'd discovered as a lonely child was still there. I was not disappointed.

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are brothers and sisters sent from London during the war years to live in the relative safety of their uncle's country home. There they find themselves mostly unsupervised, with no lessons to distract them, or adults to encroach on their time. During a game of hide and seek in the unfamiliar mansion, the children find themselves in a wardrobe that seems to go on much deeper than it should. Indeed, it opens onto another world entirely, a world where animals talk, and magic is reality, a world under seige of the White Witch.. in the words of a young Prince Caspian --

" ... When everything was quite different. When all the animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees. Naiads and dryads they were called. And there were dwarfs. And there were lovely little fauns in all the woods..."

"....Oh, but thre were battles and adventures in those days. Wonderful adventures. Once there was a White Witch and she made herse
lf Queen of the whole country. and she made it so that it was always winter. And then two boys and two girls came from somewhere ... and became Kings and Queens and it was all because of Aslan..."

-- Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" details the battle between Aslan the Lion and the White Witch, and the part the four children play in the eventual triumph of Aslan.

Like Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), C.S. Lewis was not a writer of children's books. He was a theologian, well known already for his works on theology and philosophy when he published the books for which he is best remembered. And like Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland', the tale that is on the surface a delight for children, is in truth an allegory that goes much deeper and provokes thought and moral judgment. The tale of the conflict between Aslan and the White Witch is widely accepted as an allegory for the Christian experience, and the eventual triumph of Good over Evil. The story occastionally suffers from Lewis' heavy-handed narration, but the tale and the characters are engrossing enough to rise above it.

The books have been a favorite bedtime read at our house for nearly fifteen years, with my children asking over and over for their favorite passages to be re-read, long after they were old enough to read for themselves.

And if you've any question that books written in the 1940s and 50s can have any relevance to todays' children, I cite this one last bit of evidence: when I started writing this review, I asked my daughter to grab the book off the shelf so I could refresh my memory on some details. She couldn't. It's out on loan to a friend.. with a list of five more friends who get it 'next'. For a generation of girls weaned on The Babysitters' Club, that's saying a lot.

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