I voted for The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The images are so striking and the storytelling close to perfect. I’ll never forget my first reading, the excitement of following Lucy through that wardrobe, the lamppost in the forest, Mr. Tumnus.
But it was hard to choose between this one and The Horse and his Boy, which was probably my favorite in childhood. A terrific story, with wonderful fairy tale elements and brilliant characters.
I remember rolling my eyes at some of the attitudes toward girls. The Christianity flew over my head when I was a child, though as an adult I can’t understand how I missed it!
It looks like we Publication Order people are in the majority here, unless the Chronological Order folks are just not speaking up? I didn’t realize that it was a hot button topic but considering my dislike for Chronological Order I can definitely see how it could be polarizing.
While technically true, that’s just because she’s a girl. The theme is about “growing up.” She explicitly denies Aslan and Narnia because they were just games they played as children. It’s quite evocative of the way some people dismiss Christianity as a child’s fairy tale, and they’ve grown past it.
I’ve pointed out that Susan is really the only character that he could pick to pull it off. He needs the youngest two who have not been forbidden to go back to Narnia to show up when called. He needs Peter, the eldest of the main children and high king, to remain faithful. Lucy is the youngest, the first to find Narnia, the first to see Aslan in book 2, and had her little bit of falling away. Edmund (and Eustace and Jill) had huge redemption arcs.
Only Susan, the one who was more practically minded, the one who Lucy saw lie about her sister to make herself look good, the one who doubts the most–only she could be the one left behind.
And so Lewis gave her the most benign reason to be left behind: that of being too caught up in growing up. Something he himself faced, but then turned back as he got older and realized that “putting away childish things” means not to worry about what people think, rather than to try and look grown-up.
Of course, where he leaves Susan is profoundly tragic. She’s not only an orphan, but lost all her family. She’s probably going to wish she went with them so she’d have died with them–even if she doesn’t believe in heaven. It does suck that, to have that role shown of the person who turns away, he treated her so poorly. The fact that he heavily implies that she will eventually make it to Aslan’s Country (“Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen in Narnia”–his version of eternal security aka “once saved always saved”) is insufficient comfort for that.
But the idea that it was any particular sexism just does not fit. I know you didn’t say that explicitly, but people could easily get that impression from what you said.
And it’s the only time we really see these characters in the real world, and the chaos such would cause. Sure, we get Aslan showing up at the end of the Silver Chair to scare the bullies, and that is cathartic, but Jadis in London is a treat.
No magic, just that of psychology. I kinda like that better than the One Ring and it enchanting people to want it.
I love how Uncle Andrew’s flaw is in basically being a con artist, not actually knowing anything for himself. It was a great way to make his comeuppance comical.
Others have explained why the argument for chronological order is weak. It is just a single note to a kid who preferred chronological order, and he only indicated a slight preference.
But there’s also the other side: the better argument for reading in Publication Order (or, at least, Wardrobe first.) Put simply, the books themselves assume you have read them in publication order.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe talks about everything as if it’s the first time the reader has ever heard of everything. It even explicitly says “None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do.” The ending specifically says it is the beginning of the adventures in Narnia. The second book is even subtitled “The Return to Narnia.” The first three books all make a sort of trilogy within the septology, all dealing with the Christian life from salvation to arriving in Heaven.
And The Magician’s Nephew is written in a way that assumes the reader is already familiar with Narnia. Narnia is named in the second sentence as an explanation for why the book is “important.” It switches to from calling Jadis “the queen” to “the Witch” without any real explanation. “The Queen, or the Witch (whichever you like to call her) had come up with them, holding on fast by Polly’s hair.”
And it’s full of explanations for things that were stated to be mysterious in Wardrobe, like with White Witch or the Lamp post or talking animals or even the Warddrobe itself. Undermining that mystery weakens the narrative of both of them: you lose the wonder in seeing the mystery, and the joy in discovering how it happened.
Sure, outside the main trilogy and The Last Battle, it’s probably okay to mess with the order if you want. There’s no compelling reason I can think of, for example, that A Horse and His Boy can’t be read before the Silver Chair–i.e. the order in which they were written. But the text itself insists that The Magician’s Nephew be treated as a prequel.
Has anyone given a reason beyond that letter and “common sense” to read in chronological order?
The first time I saw the books re-numbered in chronological order by the publisher it struck me as a marketing ploy of some kind. There was a display and some kind of poster about it being “new”, I don’t remember what exactly, just that it really annoyed me.
Not TLWW but this thread has inspired me to burn through my top three on Audio- Horse & His Boy, The Silver Chair and The Magician’s Nephew. I think I may have to change my vote, The Horse & His Boy slightly edged out The Silver Chair on this go around but they are very , very close.
In the Silver Chair I really like how Eustace is still a grumpy kid but he’s much improved and still working on being a better person. His dragon experience changed him for the better but he is still essentially a know it all grump. I read a quote recently about how JK Rowling felt very influenced by these books but said they had no humor. I think she needs to re-read them- so many laugh out loud moments. I am glad this thread came about - I haven’t re-read the books in about 10 years and they are still wonderful.
Roald Dahl also remarks on the lack of humor in Matilda. Interesting that he and Rowling both had the same perspective on that. I tend to agree…Puddleglum has his moments and so does Reepicheep, and a couple of scenes in the Magician’s Nephew are very amusing. But I think that a lot of the humor falls flat–I never thought the Dufflepuds were nearly as funny as Lucy apparently did, for instance. Obviously YMVs.
My favorite as a child was Magician’s Nephew, and that remains true today. I love the intersection of our world and other worlds; as someone else mentioned, Jadis in London is masterfully done. I found Charn creepy as anything, and memorable for that reason. I loved Uncle Andrew the con man. And I really liked Digory and Polly–with the possible exception of early Eustace they are for me the most interesting of the kid characters.
I saw the Dawn Treader movie, best remembered (by me) for a thoroughly awful exchange of dialogue between Lucy and some made-for-the-movie ex-slave girl who Lucy has helped:
Girl: When I grow up I want to be just like you!
Lucy: No; when you grow up I want you to be just like YOU.
I voted for the TLTWTW, if only for the sheer magic that book held for me introducing my to the world of Narnia as a child, although I would say that Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair are better books.
I feel sorry for kids who start reading in the current order and have all the mysteries of Narnia spoiled by reading the Magician’s Nephew first.
Ah, but other people have indeed written other Narnia books. Back in the mid-80s, when Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were all the rage amongst America’s youth, I had two Narnia Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books.
I only have a vague memory of one of the books, though. One of them involved foiling someone called the Sea Witch and it took place during the reign of the Pevensies, so you got to meet them if you played your cards right. However, as much as I loved the Chronicles of Narnia, I realized that they made lousy Choose-Your-Own-Adventures because you just had to do what Aslan said.
Checking around, it seems there were FIVE of these books and some of them are now worth a pretty penny.
I reread “Dawn Treader” and “Silver Chair” over Christmas and was surprised that there was much less substance to DT than I remembered. We get a whole chapter of Lucy reading a magic book and spying on her schoolmates gossiping about her. Also, Aslan pops up in “deus ex machina” mode on a disturbingly regular basis to save them from even the most trivial threats, of which there are a decreasing number as the book goes on. “Silver Chair”, however, was much more interesting apart from Lewis’s clumsy parody of liberal schooling practices. Might have a reread of “Horse and His Boy” now.
I reread all of them over Christmas; they all seemed to have less substance than I remembered. You feel like you’re just getting into the story then realise you’re over halfway through the book.
The liberal school bit was pretty unintentionally funny with lines like ‘when I was at school one would have said, “I swear by the bible.” But bibles were not encouraged at Experiment House’…:eek:
As were Eustace’s teetotal non smoking vegetarian feminist (maybe even atheist!) parents. I mean, I drink and I don’t have kids, but otherwise that’s a pretty good description of me. I don’t have special underclothes though, and I’m not quite sure what horror that was supposed to represent. The utter lack of concern about turning an entire race of people into jokes who have to hop everywhere for your own entertainment (because it’s OK if they’re stupid!) is a bit unnerving as well, especially by comparison. It’s fine to completely turn hundred of lives upside down for a laugh, but healthy life choices that don’t affect anyone else are :dubious:
Lewis did have a real problem with female characters as well, in my opinion; they’re walking a very fine tightrope of ‘acceptable’ and it’s not even consistent. Susan is criticised for being vain even before she turns away from Narnia, but almost every compliment to a female character throughout is about how beautiful they are. All the male characters are told to treat the girls as special and delicate, but the girls are then complimented for not acting like they’re at all special or delicate; like Lucy being cheered for joining in the archery (unlike boring old Susan who stayed home) in the battle in a Horse and his Boy, and enthusiastically described as ‘as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy!’ This despite both girls being told that “battles are ugly when women fight” by Santa in Wardrobe.
Oh, and no-one appears to spare a thought for Susan in The Last Battle, the Pevensies worry about their parents despite them barely being mentioned up to that point, but it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone to give a crap about poor old Sue (or anyone else’s family, for that matter). Maybe she was supposed to rejoin the others in the end, but it wouldn’t have hurt for one of them to, y’know, ask Aslan if they’d ever see their sister again.
This thread’s inspiring me to re-read the Narnia books. It’s been ages since I read them (other than a fairly recent re-reading of LW&W) so I’m overdue for a re-evaluating of them.
I’ve just started off by re-reading The Horse and His Boy. The reason I picked this one is that it was easily my least favorite when I was younger - it’s the one I almost never bothered to re-read - but it’s in third place in the poll, so a lot of folks think well of it. (Re-reading it just now hasn’t changed my opinion of the book, but then I haven’t re-read the others yet, so my opinion of it relative to the others still may change. I’ll write more once I’ve read the other six.)
If you’re doing audio, I say to go for The Last Battle. It’s not my favorite book, but one version is read by Sir Patrick Stewart himself, and I adore it. I actually have it on CD, but it’s also available on Audible.