Poll: your favorite Chronicles of Narnia book?

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Athena

Yes and no, especially on the misogyny. I read them as a child in the 1970s, and looking back, I think part of my massive love of them comes from most of the books actually have female protagonists and/or strong female characters (both good and bad). That’s not really common in books from that era; in contrast, Tolkein’s books have pretty much zero women.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Consider The Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I haven’t done anything approaching a scientific count, but it seems to me that strong female protagonists are at least as common in classic children’s fantasy as they are in modern children’s fantasy. (Alice is an astonishingly cool character, in my reading. I love that kid.)

British literature seems to have had a fairly strong tradition of books involving groups of boys and girls (often siblings) having adventures together, as in the works of E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, and Enid Blyton; and I think Lewis was thinking along those lines when he wrote The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.