From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my nine year-old self

[Specter]

This is a new book by Kathrine Langrish. Here's the description:

"When I was a child I fell deeply in love with The Chronicles of Narnia. I read and re-read the books until they almost fell to pieces: I even wrote a book of stories set in that world, complete with a poster-paint picture of Aslan on the homemade dust jacket. But others took their place as I grew up, and for years they sat unopened on my shelves. Had the charm faded? What might they mean to me as an adult?

‘From Spare Oom to War Drobe’ is a love letter to that childhood passion, as well as a reappraisal of The Chronicles of Narnia in the light of maturity and changing tastes. It is a journey through Narnia, hand in hand with my nine year-old self, tracing our way through Lewis’s thick forest of allusions not only to Christianity but to Plato, fairy tales, myths, legends, medieval romances, renaissance poetry and to other children’s books. We mostly agree – but not always!"

From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my nine year-old self - Katherine Langrish

"Intelligent, informed, brilliantly responsive and some of the best appreciative writing about Narnia I have ever come across. It is writerly rather than academic, and I had no difficulty in whipping delightedly through the whole thing. The best book ever about why we love Narnia!" Francis Spufford

www.katherinelangrish.co.uk

 

[Benisse]

Thank you for sharing this book, Specter. What a joy to discover the chronicles as a child -- and to also illuminate their insights and relevance for all ages; for they are a series that has something for everyone, a series to grow up with like lifelong friends.

 

[Copperfox]

If "No one is ever told what _would_ have happened," I'll never be told whether the Chronicles _would_ have led me to belief in Jesus earlier if I had read them as a boy. But I can say that, as an adult convert to the Christian faith, I was _edified_ by the Space Trilogy, which I read long before first entering the Narnian world.