Adults who want to read the new Harry Potter book but feel embarrassed to admit their fondness for kid lit would do well to consider the words of C. S. Lewis: “Critics who treat adult as a term of approval,” he said, “instead of merely a descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.”
I haven’t read any Harry Potter myself – a problem I hope to correct in the coming weeks – but I have read plenty of C. S. Lewis, and in particular his seven-volume classic, The Chronicles of Narnia. These books of course were written with children in mind, even though Lewis had none of his own. (Isn’t it strange how some of our most popular children’s writers, such as Margaret Wise Brown and Dr. Seuss, were childless?) And they may be best experienced as children, though their aims are as mature as anything found in literature.
That’s because the fundamental purpose of the Narnia stories is to convey the reality of Christian truth – a project that became Lewis’s lifework following his conversion in 1931, after his friends Hugo Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien convinced him of it during a nighttime walk. Lewis spent the next 15 years or so giving the lectures and writing the books that would make him the 20th century’s most famous Christian apologist (Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, etc.). Then, in 1949, he began writing the Narnia stories in earnest, adding to his reputation.
One of the reasons they succeed as children’s literature is because they are rollicking good stories full of talking animals, dastardly villains, and climactic sword fights. They can be enjoyed as if they were nothing deeper than dashed-off fairy tales. But there’s actually much more than rousing adventure going on in Narnia. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then Narnia is the continuation of Sunday school by different devices. The first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, presents the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection. Another one, The Magician’s Nephew, recounts the creation and the fall. The last in the series, The Last Battle, describes the end of the world.
For the rest, go to the source!
