Lewis, C.S.. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1950. Print. 154 pages.
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SETTING: 95% Narnia, 5% in their guardian's home.
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SUMMARY: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, four siblings sent to live in the countryside for their own safety during World War II, find themselves in a magical world that they can only access via an ordinary looking wardrobe in their caretaker's home.
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FAVORITE QUOTE: "'Wherever is this?' said Peter's voice, sounding tired and pale in the darkness. (I hope you know what I mean by a voice sounding pale.)" - Chapter 10, page 84.
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I finally made my way to the library! And picked up a nice variety of books, this time based on authors I like. This book was a somewhat last minute decision. I've been wanting to read a children's/young adult series from beginning to end for a while now. I was looking to read Michael Scott's series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, but they didn't have the first book :( Randomly, I remembered that I'd never finished The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember reading the first book in the series a long time ago, and I might have read The Magician's Nephew too at some point. Anyhow, there were plenty of copies of all the books in this series, so this has become the chosen series of the summer. It should be a quick finish considering the novels are fairly short and simple, since they were written for kids.
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Things I liked about this book:
- Fantasy! I love fantasy fiction!
- The numerous allegories. As a kid, I had no idea what was going on. One of the main motivators to read this entire series was to see what I would pick up now, as an adult. The Christian allegories were a straight shot; I was able to identify and understand those very easily, mostly because I'm familiar with the main Christian stories. The references to Greek and Roman mythology, on the other hand, were a little lost on me, sadly because I don't have much memory for the mythology I learned in school. I understood them after I did some research and read about those connections.
- The ending. It's brings the story full circle in a way that I thoroughly appreciated.
- The professor! He's the man charged with caring for the children, and he's such a fabulous, open-minded character. He doesn't have much of a role in the book, but the few appearances he makes are noteworthy.
- It's written so well, and is definitely a story-teller's story. As you're reading the book, it feels like you're actually sitting in front of someone who is telling you the story, someone who was there to experience the entire journey, down to every last detail. It's like in books and movies, where a scene is described in which children are sitting around the town elder, listening to his adventures from his youth. The fabulous way in which this book is written is probably one of the reasons it is still so popular today.
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Things I didn't like/found funny about this book:
- That the four main characters' speech changes at the end of the novel: "Then said King Peter (for they talked in quite a different style now, having been Kings and Queens for so long)..." (p.150). I thought it was a weird, funny, and somewhat unnecessary detail to incorporate into the story. Perhaps it was to emphasize just how much time had passed between the main battle and the ending of the novel? But that point could have been made very clear without the strange speech change.
- Edmund. His character had a purpose, of course, but he was so bratty and annoying.
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Funny thing I learned while choosing this book at the library: there's a dispute as to which order you should read the books. There are those who argue you should read them in the order they were published, while others say chronological order is the way to go. I sat down on the library floor and researched the pros and cons of both orders (yay smart phones!), and liked the argument for reading them in publication order better. Via chronological order, the reader gets to experience the story in an orderly timeline from beginning to end. But when read in publication order, the reader gets a step-wise introduction to this magical world, in the way it came to the author's head. Publication order seemed more genuine, and so that is what I stuck with.
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Recommend? Yes!
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PS - I really enjoyed the author's introduction to this book, so I'm going to share it below:
My dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis
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PS - I really enjoyed the author's introduction to this book, so I'm going to share it below:
My dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis
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