(no subject)

[rivka]

Last night I picked up a new chapter book to read to Alex. "Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy."

We read four chapters before bed, stopping - with difficulty - at the end of Edmund's first trip to Narnia and his meeting with the White Witch.

This morning, after breakfast, Alex picked up the book and asked me to read the next chapter. At various points I tried to suggest that we stop. When we finished chapter twelve, just before "Deep Magic From the Dawn of Time," I let her know that if we read any further we wouldn't be able to stop until the end of the book. She wanted to keep going. With some difficulty, I extracted myself long enough to shower. Then we plunged back into it.

We finished the book a few minutes ago. Solidly, since breakfast time, we worked through 140 pages of dense, exciting, scary fantasy. When Aslan died - I debated putting a spoiler warning here, but come on - she sobbed and writhed on the couch in misery. I promised that it would have a happy ending and read inexorably on. Michael came in and held her while I read.

We spent some time afterward reviewing the plot. She kept coming back to the same couple of questions - why did the Witch want to kill Edmund? Why did she kill Aslan? I think it was less that she didn't understand the book and more that she was grappling with the Problem of Evil.

"That was such a saaaaad book!" she complained. "Can we read the second one?"

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Wow. Kudos to you for keeping up with it, and to both you and Michael for helping her through the emotionally wrenching parts.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Wow. On all fronts.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Narnia, Alex. :)

[txanne.livejournal.com]

<3, is all I can say. <3.

[morning-glory.livejournal.com]

Yes, my girls love that one too. Allie has incorporated the white witch into her play as a nemesis.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[kymmz.livejournal.com]

That right there, that is why I want to have children, I want to introduced them to my favourite books. And I think Narnia is if not #1, then certainly in the top three.

[ailbhe]

Wow. And I thought I was young to be exposed to Narnia. It never occurred to me that it would be a quite, quite different experience to be exposed to it from a safe home. And even more different not reading it oneself.

That's revelatory.

(Which is "the second one" in your ordering? Since, er, that's it, in mine).

[rivka.livejournal.com]

(Which is "the second one" in your ordering? Since, er, that's it, in mine).

Oh, dear.

Original publication order was:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle

In recent years, they've been repackaged in chronological order, based on a chance mention in one of C.S. Lewis's letters that he'd thought of revising them to be ordered that way. I think that was a terrible idea. It makes much more emotional sense to get the origin story of The Magician's Nephew after you are already deeply familiar with, and in love with, Narnia.

We're reading my own old books, which are properly numbered in publication order.

[ailbhe]

Ah, my copies were my older sisters', from before 1984, and TMN is labelled 1, though I didn't read it first. I read them all out of order as I found them in the house, when I was six (the year I made my First Holy communion). TLTWTW was definitely the most frightening.

Rob read them without ever realising they had Christian undertones.

I can't wait to see what Alex thinks of Reepicheep in Dawn Treader.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! I envy her. She's got all the Harry Potter books ahead of her.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Not for some time, I think, even for the first one. We might try The Hobbit soon, though.

[ailbhe]

That's interesting, because my instinct would be to feed my kids Harry Potter before Narnia because it's less profoundly distressing - the bad stuff is far more surface and caricatured and less intense, I think. What's your take on it?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

My thoughts about waiting for Harry Potter are based on a few different things. I think they're more graphic and horror-influenced, probably in large part just because our culture is so much more horror-influenced and open to graphic depictions of violence than it was sixty years ago. I am also reluctant to expose her to murdered parents and the attempted murder of an infant. (I know we read James and the Giant Peach, but the level of intensity there was dramatically lower, it's just a brief mention at the very beginning.) Also, Harry Potter just strikes me as being more focused on concerns of older kids, like inter-kid dynamics and lingering resentments and so forth.

The way the series ramps up in complexity and darkness and ambiguity and scariness as you go through the books is also a factor. I think they're meant to be read at about the rate of a book a year, as Harry matures, but who could actually hold their kid to that?

I suspect that LWW may be less frightening to a child who is being raised outside of Christianity and who has never encountered the concept of sin. But yeah, it was intense for her. She really did need to be on her Papa's lap there towards the end. (I was of course nursing the baby while I read, or she would've been on mine.)

[acceberskoorb.livejournal.com]

Yay addictive behavior!

Vol. 1 (for me, always Lion, for I loved encountering The Magician's Nephew later and it was my favorite for a time) was assigned in my Children's Literature course a few weeks ago and the reactions were fascinating. Almost to a one, fellow [UU] students were appalled at the iconography. I was unchurched as a kid and though I was relatively familiar with Hebrew bible stories, I was pretty clueless about Jesus. I received the set for Christmas from my Evangelical uncle when I was 11 and devoured them never knowing the context. I think part of what I loved about them was the deep religious story, which I was able to enjoy without any kind of baggage or trauma. My classmates who were so horrified, especially folks who hadn't read the series as children, seemed incapable of understanding the story of Christianity (which I think is kind of wonderful) outside of all they see as troubling about the Christians in history who have perpetuated violence. The discussions made me terribly sad for them.

How exciting for Alex to have so much wonder in her future!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You know, I was a Christian kid who went to church and Sunday School and I was still oblivious to the overpowering Christianness of LWW for the first several read-throughs.

I feel sad for your classmates too. Especially if what upset them wasn't "wow, substitutionary sacrifice is really kind of creepy and screwed up, isn't it?" but "Christians have done terrible things in the name of their religion, so the whole thing has to go." Because it seems like Narnia is a chance to have the Christian story with just the good parts, all Aslan and no Paul (to say nothing of no Fred Phelps).

It's nice that Alex gets to enjoy Narnia without any of the baggage.

[platypus]

I went to Catholic schools, and when I realized the religious imagery of LWW and pointed it out to my friends they were surprised and I thought myself extremely insightful. My husband, being raised non-religious, has only the vaguest sense that there are some religious themes.

[ailbhe]

Also, this may not be necessary but it might help, given the nature of mother-to-mother communications -- I am not criticising your choice to read specific things to Alex. I'm just trying to use your experience and decisions to figure stuff out for myself.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I read those at almost exactly that age. Yay.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I remember that when I first started doing chapter books last fall I rolled my eyes about people who claimed that their preschoolers loved Narnia and/or The Hobbit, and you told me that there was a huge leap in maturity that happens around this age. And you were right. Six months ago this would've seemed unfathomable.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

I just read The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narniawhich led to a re-reading of all of the books, except The Last Battle. Because life is too short to read that for the 47th time...