My Adventures in Narnia

I didn’t grow up with the Chronicles of Narnia. None of my schools required us to read the books and I wasn’t much of a reader previous to the millennium. If you were to ask me who C.S. Lewis was, I probably would have given you a blank stare followed by “I have no idea.” In fact, I didn’t hear much about the beloved classics until the mid-90′s, when someone referred me to the 1979 cartoon based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Today, I consider the Chronicles of Narnia one of my favorite series.  I started to read the books soon after I first saw the trailer for a  2005 Narnia movie from Disney. The books are fun to read and full of wisdom. I believe that C.S. Lewis is one of the greatest authors of all time. His chronicles can be read as adventure stories or stories with a deeper spiritual meaning. As an adult, I read them for both reasons. If you read them as a child and enjoyed them, I highly recommend reading them again as an adult.

The Silver Chair has been my most recent read, while I’m also revisiting the Disney-made films The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. My son is only three, but he has been enjoying the films, getting excited every time he sees Aslan or the train taking the Pevensies to Professor Kirke’s house. I cannot wait until he is old enough (and patient enough) for me to read the C.S. Lewis classics to him.

The Chronicles of Narnia have been in continuous publication  since 1954 and have sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages. As one would expect with any popular, long-lived work, references to The Chronicles of Narnia are relatively common in pop culture. References to the lion Aslan, traveling via wardrobe, and direct references to The Chronicles of Narnia occur in television, songs, games, and graphic novels.

For me, the books remain the best way experience Narnia. Lewis was once quoted saying,

“Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, or comic… My own eyes are not enough for me. In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do.”

… and I couldn’t agree more.

The Chronicles of Narnia

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