Of Furry Things, Frightening Things and Furniture Things! (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis)

Name: karenuk

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Product:	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Date:	18/10/02 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An enchanting read, A great adventure, A timeless classic

Disadvantages: Some old-fashioned language used at times, We all have to grow old :-(

I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling down this week. It might be because I have a birthday in a few days and I am feeling very old. Maybe it’s because the weather’s suddenly gone all wintry. Maybe I’m just fed up of the day-to-day routine of a dreary housewife.

Sometimes it’s nice to retreat into dreams. Being young and worry-free seems an eternity ago, but it can be good looking back and seeing how your journey has progressed. When I studied social sciences a few years ago, there was a subject called ‘Continuity and Change’ which seems very apt at times.

As my life seems to have inexorably marched on and I have altered from Daughter to Mother, it is strange looking around and seeing what things are still present in my life. I religiously watch Granada Plus’ repeats of George and Mildred. Shops are full of items from my 1970s childhood – Rainbow, Clangers, Bagpuss. My kids play with my Sindy dolls, pairing them up with modern Barbies to attend the latest fashion show.

But if you look at my kids’ bookshelves, there are many of my books there from when I was a child. While George and Mildred and Sindy dolls date me, a book remains timeless. As a child, I collected eighty different Enid Blyton books. My kids now own even more. Amelia Jane, Malory Towers, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, My Naughty Little Sister, Milly-Molly-Mandy – they’re all there, devoured by my own children some twenty-five years after I read them.

And so is this one – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. This was first published in 1950, but doesn’t come across as outdated. Then again, why would talking lions and evil witches become old? Surely the Harry Potter books are only similar themes revisited.

So today I thought I’d go back to my childhood, transported by the land of imagination situated on every bookcase. To get away from bills
, Christmas, cold weather and housework. To visit the magical land that’s only a wardrobe away…

The story begins by introducing the four child leads – Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund. They are siblings and evacuees from war-torn London who are sent to stay with ‘the Professor’ in his huge country mansion with countless rooms to explore.

Little Lucy is the first to go through the wardrobe and we share her excitement and fear of this unknown land. We are first greeted with the snow, then we meet the Faun who is half-man half-goat and called Mr. Tumnus.

Of course, the other three children soon travel through the wardrobe too and it’s the start of an amazing adventure full of fantastical creatures of myth and magic. The characters of the children are well described and easy to relate to. You get to see the way the siblings behave towards each other, which anyone with brothers or sisters will understand. The four children become real enough so you care what happens to them, which is always the essence of a good story.

We soon discover the magical new world they stumble into is called Narnia. It is, like any world, full of interesting creatures, good kind ones and wicked ones. We have the wonderful, brave and majestic lion - Aslan - and the ‘boo hiss’ horrible evil witch. We meet Dwarves, a family of talking beavers, wolves and even Father Christmas!

We learn a few lessons as we go along. Edmund becomes influenced by the White Witch and turns into a selfish boy, who is nasty to his little sister Lucy. We learn that things aren’t always what they seem. In fact, you can add a whole bunch of clichés here – blood is thicker than water, there’s no place like home…

There’s enough in this to keep both boys and girls turning pages long after lights out. It’s an enchanting story and a wonderful adventure to get lost in. The situations the childr
en find themselves in are fantastical, but the characters of Susan, Peter, Edmund and Lucy are so well described that it’s easy to get sucked into it all.

It’s exciting and the pace is often a fast one, as a child ends up in another dangerous situation and you are desperate to see how everything turns out. Narnia is a brilliantly drawn land with some parallels to ours, but enough differences to fascinate the readers. It is frightening in parts, but is basically a story of good triumphing over evil.

The book itself is around 170 pages, which means it’s an ideal book to read yourself when you’re around eight to eleven years old. Of course, you can read it to younger ones too and the chapters are nicely spaced, so you get enough action in to keep them eager for more, but no-one’s bored senseless.

The language does sound old-fashioned in some ways with phrases like ‘perfectly splendid’, ‘jolly good’ and ‘old chap’ being rarely heard these days. This doesn’t detract from the book though, but it may raise a few giggles from older readers.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, but it is by far the best known. There are seven novels in the set and I read them all in childhood, but this was the only one I read more than once. I would definitely rate this one in my all-time top ten children’s books.

Overall, it’s a jolly good romp and a perfectly splendid book, old chap ;-)

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