The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Journey to Narnia in the classic children’s book by C.S. Lewis, beloved by kids and parents: Book 2 (The Chronicles of Narnia)

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Lewis, C. S. (2007). The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963. Zondervan. p.497. ISBN 978-0-06-081922-4. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe; a story for children" (first U.S. edition). LCC record. Retrieved 2012-12-09.

And that’s something special. I do, however, much prefer the works of Tolkien. I feel that his writing is more universal in terms of age audience. With this though, I’m very much aware of it as a children’s book. The prose is designed to sound like a children’s bedtime story in places. That’s not exactly a bad thing though. I love Narnia but I can, at least from my perspective, objectively say that Tolkien was a better writer. Though what Narnia does have is Aslan. It’s hard not to Aslan. Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if he met Gandalf? Could you imagine the stories those two could share? I'm dreaming again.It was first read to me in 4th grade. We would all come in from lunch and our teacher would read to us for about 30 minutes before we would start class. I read this book as a book challenge and adored it. I had not read this book before and did not know of its existence as a child. I would have loved it even more then, I imagine. Narnia is caught in endless winter that has lasted a century when the children first enter. Norse tradition mythologises a "great winter", known as the Fimbulwinter, said to precede Ragnarök. The trapping of Edmund by the White Witch is reminiscent of the seduction and imprisonment of Kai by the Snow Queen in Hans Christian Andersen's novella of that name. [45]

Lewis (2004 [1947]). Collected Letters: Volume 2 (1931–1949). p. 802. ISBN 0-06-072764-0. Letter to E. L. Baxter dated 10 September 1947. In that regard, I have to say Lewis did an excellent job boiling down Christianity into a fable, and leaving the problem of evil completely intact. Some readers suggest that Aslan lets the queen take over to teach the kids a lesson, but is it really worthwhile to let all the inhabitants of a kingdom suffer a century of misery just to teach a few kids about the true meaning of friendship? Nicholson, Mervyn (1991). "What C. S. Lewis Took From E. Nesbit". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 16: 16–22. doi: 10.1353/chq.0.0823. S2CID 143700282 . Retrieved 1 December 2014. I love that Father Christmas comes giving gifts that represent the gifts & talents we each have to help others with and to overcome evil with. In short, Lewis rejects the idea that his Narnia books are allegory because, for them to qualify as allegorical, Aslan would have to ‘represent’ Jesus. But he doesn’t: he is Jesus, if Narnia existed and a deity decided to walk among the people of that world. We might think of this as something like the distinction between simile and metaphor: simile is like allegory, because one thing is like something else, whereas in metaphor, one thing is the other thing.Mr Tumnus the faun = an aberration. With his goat like legs and general caprine features you might be forgiven for imagining that he might be an agent of Satan, or Pan or some other pagan deity. Nope. He's on the side of good and not evil and that there throws the nice set of biblical allusions into chaos. At a lamppost oddly located in the forest, she meets Tumnus, a faun, who invites her to tea in his home. There the faun confesses that he invited her not out of hospitality, but with the intention of betraying her to the White Witch. Lindskoog, Kathryn. Journey into Narnia. Pasadena, CA: Hope Publ House. ISBN 978-0-932727-89-3. pp. 44–46. After Ed was returned and his siblings saw him for the first time Aslan said, "Here is your brother and there's no need to talk about what's in the past." They forgave their brother. Aslan neither excused him nor condemned him. In August 1948, during a visit by an American writer, Chad Walsh, Lewis talked vaguely about completing a children's book he had begun "in the tradition of E. Nesbit". [16] After this conversation, not much happened until the beginning of the next year. Then everything changed. In his essay "It All Began With a Picture", Lewis continues: "At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him." [17]

Edmund is the second-youngest of four siblings. He has a bad relationship with his brother and sisters. Edmund is known to be a liar, and often harasses Lucy. Lured by the White Witch's promise of power and an unlimited supply of magical treats, Edmund betrays his siblings. He later repents and helps defeat the White Witch. He is eventually crowned King Edmund the Just. Some people critisize C.S Lewis for using too much Christian symbolism, but I was in 4th grade and to me this was the most wonderful and exciting book ever written for children. How much more of the story Lewis then wrote is uncertain. Roger Lancelyn Green thinks that he might even have completed it. In September 1947, Lewis wrote in a letter about stories for children: "I have tried one myself, but it was, by the unanimous verdict of my friends, so bad that I destroyed it." [14]National Education Association (2007). "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children" . Retrieved 22 August 2012.

Readers might quibble over Lewis’s categorisation here, and decide that what he is outlining is a distinction without a difference (perhaps clouded by his Christianity, and his unwillingness to see his children’s books as ‘mere’ allegory for Christianity, but instead as something more direct and powerful).

Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, two beavers, are friends of Tumnus. They play host to Peter, Susan and Lucy and lead them to Aslan. Lewis described the origin of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in an essay titled "It All Began with a Picture": [9] The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about 16. Then one day, when I was about 40, I said to myself: 'Let's try to make a story about it.'