Get the feed"A Glimpse of Narnia Before I Read Lewis"
Monday, Oct 12th 2009
Nancy- I am so glad you asked this question. I loved the book as a kid, and when my oldest (now 18) was little, I was happy to introduce it to her. Later, she would ask for it so many times that my wife and I ended up memorizing the book.
But it was good to think about why I like it. Was it just an unexamined childhood preference, like nostalgia for some sugary cereal?
A few things stick out.
One, the physical transformation of Max's room completely fascinated me as a kid. As an adult, I can theorize about this being simply an imaginary transformation, a flight of fancy, like the adventures Calvin has in Calvin and Hobbes. But as a child, it was about something more profound, that the givenness of things was mutable, that miracles were really possible. That dreadful situations could be dissolved into something far vaster, more imaginatively profound, both more comforting and more scary than the first world we know. It was, for me, a glimpse of Narnia before I read Lewis.
As a parent, I see another thing going on that I like. That is, Max gets the punishment he deserves-- a big time out, a chance to think things over. (As an aside, we've given our share of time-outs, but have never sent kids to bed without their dinner. Does this work?) But within the punishment, there's room for grace. His mother doesn't try to control his interior life. Instead Max, like the prodigal son, takes what he's been given and goes on a wild trip. And like the prodigal son, he has to go very far away to realize what he's left behind. And yet again like that parable, when he finally gets home, he is greeted with a prodigally gracious welcome: the supper he forfeited by his contumacy is waiting for him right on his bedside table. And it is still hot.
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