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A review of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia

by C. S. Lewis

Seven loosely linked children’s classics about believable children in a magic world with a wonderful lion

Reviewed by: Nancy Chapple

The Complete Chronicles of Narnia There’s a series of seven books I loved when I was a little girl. I read them to myself; being kind of precocious, I was 8, 9, maybe 10. A couple years ago, my life took a new turn: I became stepmother to an 8-year old, herself not yet a big reader, but an engaged and enthusiastic read-aloud-to-me person. I chose these books because I wanted to travel together to a wonderful world that just the two of us would share.

The magic here is not magic wands, spells, witches and wizards à la Harry Potter. One magical element is how to travel to Narnia: through the back of a wardrobe, into a painting of a dragon-ship, through a door in a stone wall at a boarding school. The kids are ordinary nice kids, prone to occasional disagreements, quite daring, willing to be pressed into service for the cause of good. They encounter dwarves (not the most reliable of creatures), talking horses, giants (strong and silent), a white witch. Certain stretches are quite intense because it’s not clear whether the kids will come out on top: days trekking across the desert with a shortage of provisions, weeks spent travelling on the water to visit a dispersed collection of very old lords.

There’s a basic understanding of what makes kids tick, a tremendous underlying warmth, in the omniscient lion Aslan. The books are exciting, but also descriptive. Long passages without dialogue deal with new landscapes or conflicts of conscience.

What can I say that hundreds of other enthusiastic readers haven’t said before me? I’m sure these books are equally appropriate for girls and boys. Buy them one by one or in a boxed set and sit down and discover Narnia with joy!

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Complete Chronicles of Narnia

Copyright © by Nancy Chapple, 2003










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