Narnia

In the spirit of rediscovering my childhood and for other reasons, I've been reading through the Narnia books over the last few months. I know everyone's all MLAH IT'S ALL JESUS BLAH but here at ribble's we believe in accepting the values of authors in the context of their work. Otherwise you miss out on some great stuff. Once you accept the fact that C.S. Lewis was a pretty Christian dude, Narnia is a fascinating read.

These are, in essence, stories to keep children interested - they've got action, adventure and talking animals (although Lewis's talking animals could kick the ass of any suck-up remake talking animal modern America could throw at them.) But Lewis has a real sense of story and a casual way of putting the reader right there next to the main characters. Lewis will say "I can't describe this, you really would have had to have been there to have seen how awesome this was," in almost-so-many words. By making us imagine how something is so much better or more awe-inspiring than the description we're reading, our imagination makes it that much more real. It's like how Miazaki exaggerates the motion of a little girl and so makes her more real than any little girl we've seen. Lewis gives us the ball to and lets us run with it.

Lewis also has the best approach to sequels I've seen. I've said this before and I'm not the first, but the key to a good sequel is expanding the world of the original. Lewis did this in four of his six sequels to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by having hisheroess go in a different direction from Narnia each time - East, North and down, South and finally West and to the end. Our heroes were demonstrating the literal limits of the world of Narnia. Throw in a prequel and you're set.