Narnia Still Thrives Author C.S. Lewis Expressed His Theology In The Series Of Children’S Books That Began With “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe”

Narnia is 50 years old in Earth years.

The magical land ruled by Aslan the lion — where trees dance and animals talk, where dwarfs and giants, marshwiggles and dufflepuds walk alongside humans — is experiencing a rebirth, some say, thanks to that other popular fantasy series about a boy wizard named Harry Potter.

But those in the know, including children’s librarians and college professors, claim the C.S. Lewis books known as the Narnia Chronicles have always been popular.

The Spokane Public Library owns dozens of copies of the books in the series. More often than not they are checked out.

At Whitworth College, a course on the author has filled to capacity every year for the past two decades.

A C.S. Lewis book club meets monthly at Kaufer’s Christian Supply. Attendance is highest when the club is reading his children’s books.

So strong is the appeal for the series of seven children’s novels that when the folks at HarperCollins released a hardback, commemorative edition of the Narnia Chronicles just in time for Christmas, they didn’t even bother with a big media blitz or advertising campaign.

Instead, it just quietly hit the bookstore shelves about a month ago. Ever since, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godmothers and godfathers have been snatching them up as treasured gifts for their favorite children.

Children themselves are constantly asking for the books, said Judy Hamel, co-owner of the Children’s Corner Bookstore in River Park Square.

“There are people out there introducing kids to these books,” she said. “It doesn’t get any publicity. It’s all word of mouth.”

Written during and after World War II by Lewis, the first book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” was published in 1950. From there, Lewis, a theologian and an expert on medieval history, published a book each year until the series was complete.

The central characters are children who are magically thrust into a spectacular land in order to set things right.

In the first book, Lucy leads her older sister and two older brothers through a mysterious wardrobe, past fur coats and mothballs into a land where “it’s always Winter but Christmas never arrives.”

In the later books, other children enter Narnia, each time by a different route. Once in Narnia, the characters are faced with a variety of challenges, both physical and moral.

It is one of the few books that appeals to both boys and girls, said Viki Ash-Geisler, youth services coordinator for the Spokane Public Libraries.

Boys like multiple characters and multiple plots. Girls like to get to know a few characters more intimately, she said. The Narnia Chronicles do both.

To this day, Narnia fans debate over the order in which they should be read. Purists argue the Chronicles should be read in the order Lewis wrote them, starting with “The Wardrobe” and ending with “The Last Battle.”

But HarperCollins published the collection in the chronological order of the stories, meaning “The Magician’s Nephew” is the first book.

The argument fades for most people after the first reading, since children and adults alike tend to read the books over and over.

Much of Lewis’ theology is expressed in the books, said Forrest Baird, the philosophy professor at Whitworth who teaches the popular course on the author.

“Lewis said that meaning is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning,” Baird said. “He wanted people to experience the meaning of the Christian faith and later they can come to understand the truth of it.”

For Joanne Leiserson, reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” caused her to return to Christianity.

As a young adult, Leiserson rebelled against her harsh Christian childhood. She was dabbling in Buddhism when she read the first of the series at age 28.

“It was only then that I finally started to understand the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection,” she said. “I started to understand, not on an intellectual level, but on the feeling level.”

Leiserson is now working toward a master’s of divinity degree at Gonzaga University and is the director of Christian Education at Millwood Community Presbyterian Church. She has used the books to teach children the lessons of Christianity.

Although one goal of the books is to explain various elements of Christian theology on an emotional level, they are not allegories, like “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Rather, Lewis described them as “suppositions.”

“As in, let’s suppose there was an entirely different world than this. And let’s suppose in this world the inhabitants did bad things and God had to intervene,” Baird explained. “What would that look like?”

There are allegorical elements. Aslan’s death is meant to mirror the death of Jesus Christ. “The Last Battle” loosely resembles the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. And “The Magician’s Nephew” is similar to the creation story as told in Genesis.

But if the reader looks for a one-to-one correspondence, he will be confused, Baird cautioned.

And readers not looking for a religious message at all can be perfectly satisfied by the stories.

“It speaks to some universal themes in life,” said Hamel, the bookstore owner. “The children are the ones who solve the problem, make the discoveries. It’s the children who are brave. The children have all the qualities we wish for ourselves.”

And many of the faults that children recognize in themselves are articulated as qualities of the children who visit Narnia. The result is that each of the characters is faulted. Children, like adults, are drawn in by realistic, complex characters, Ash-Geisler said.

In “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Edmund betrays his siblings because he is jealous and angry. So when the evil Queen promises him his fill of Turkish Delight, he sells out.

In “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Eustace whines and moans and complains so much he drives his companions to distraction.

In “The Silver Chair,” Jill and Eustace bicker to the point they loose sight of their goal.

Although the books are geared for the older elementary school crowd, Ash-Geisler recommends them to families who come into the downtown library looking for books everyone can read together.

They are interesting enough to captivate adults. Yet the imagery is vivid enough that when read aloud, even 5-year-olds can follow along.

Indeed, that was Lewis’ goal when he wrote the series.

“A children’s story, which is enjoyed only by children, is a bad children’s story,” Lewis once said. “The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.”