The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe review

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Geoffrey Bles, 1950, 208 pages

YAY! I made it to ten reviews. This is the longest running New Year’s Resolution of all time. Well, might as well get into it. Review number ten is of the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia series . . . at least, the first one written (this is what happens when you don’t plan ahead).

The origins of this book are almost a century old. Back when Lewis was sixteen (1914 or 15) he saw a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and a parcel. Then, when he was about forty (circa 1939) he decided to make a story out of it. It was around 1939 that he was given three children. Not his own, but children that were evacuated from London to avoid bomb raids (remember, this was WWII people). The edition of the book I read contained a letter from Lewis to his god-daughter Lucy, saying that he was writing the book for her, though when he finished it she’d be too old for fairy tales, and when it was published she’d be older still, so he wouldn’t know what she thought of it until he was too deaf to hear. Well, he was right, though with a different sort of ‘deaf’ (too soon?)

The plot actually does relate to the kids being brought to Lewis’s house quite strongly. The characters (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy), were evacuated from London during WWII to escape the bomb raids. They ended up living with an old professor, who owned a large house with many mysteries in it. One rainy day, they four of them were exploring the house, and found a room with nothing more than an old wardrobe in it. The other three left the room, but Lucy wanted to look inside the wardrobe. She opened it, and saw only coats. She went into the wardrobe, reaching for what she assumed would be the back of the wardrobe. However, what she found was another world, covered entirely in snow.

While there, she met a faun by the name of Mr. Tumnus, who informed her that the queen of Narnia, The White Witch, was on the lookout for children, and that anyone who saw them was to report it to her or be turned to stone. Lucy returned to her own world, expecting that hours had passed, when in fact only seconds had passed. After a little while, Edmund had stumbled across Narnia too, but he found The White Witch. She offered to make him king of Narnia, in exchange for bringing his brother and sisters to her. Can The White Witch get all four of the kids before Aslan the Lion shows up to stop her? (I had to say something about the lion; he’s one of the title characters).

It was odd seeing several very Christian references (i.e. “it’s always winter, but never Christmas”) but there’s a high level of magic use (i.e. the dark arts). I’m gonna let that slide since it’s a children’s book (and not a bad one at that), but still, maybe I’m just looking into it too hard.

My rating: 7/10

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