Reviews for C. S. Lewis letters to children

The average rating for C. S. Lewis letters to children based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-10 00:00:00 Lorant Veress C. S. Lewis was a special soul, one of those rare people who retain the best of youth even into old age. He had a rapport with children that was surely the product of his own child-like nature. In his essay, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," he recounts an anecdote that, I think, provides some insight into his ability to speak to children as fluently and naturally as he does: "I have been told that Arthur Mee never met a child and never wished to: it was, from his point of view, a bit of luck that boys liked reading what he liked writing" (On Stories, 32). Now, unlike Mee, Lewis did know children and he had affectionate relationships with them. But the second part of that statement, that boys liked reading what Mee liked writing, I do believe can be applied to Lewis. He simply liked writing the kind of stories that children like reading. As he says of his children's books, "I put in what I would have liked to read when I was a child and what I still like reading now that I am in my fifties" (On Stories, 31). But no one who reads Lewis could possibly doubt this. One has only to read some of the essays collected in On Stories to see that Lewis was unabashedly fond of fairy tales, fantasy, and science fiction. When he wasn't gushing over the fantasies of George MacDonald, he was singing the praises of E. Nesbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, and David Lindsay. With this in mind, it ceases to be surprising that a bachelor should get along so well with children. After all, parenthood does not automatically confer insight into the minds of children. Lewis gets along with children because he has never stopped being one. As he says to Phyllida: "Parts of me are still 12" (34). And that is what makes Letters to Children such a delight. Lewis writes to his young correspondents much as he would to adults. He respects their intelligence. He never condescends or preaches. And he takes their questions, concerns, and ideas seriously. Of course, he doesn't write to children exactly as he might to an adult. In his letter to Francine, for example, he says that his experiences in boarding school were "too horrid to tell anyone of your age" (102). Naturally he considers the innocence of children. But other than the omissions anyone with common sense would make when communicating with children, he writes simply as one person to another. Many of the children who wrote to him thanked him for his books and asked questions about Narnia, including some rather deep theological questions, but some of his most charming letters are those that show Lewis at his most child-like. He shares with his goddaughter Sarah a poem he wrote about a rabbit that lives in the wood by his college. The little fellow, who Lewis calls Baron Biscuit, stood up and put his front paws on Lewis while Lewis was feeding him (21-22). There's nothing like a cute anecdote involving a rabbit to endear someone to me. But that's not all. He expresses his fondness for mice, which he never ever sets traps for in his room (32), thinks having a horse would be much better than having cars or planes (37), and suggests that if guinea pigs could talk they'd speak German (57). I have but one complaint to make about this book and it has nothing to do with Lewis himself, but rather the editors Marjorie Lamp Mead and Lyle Wesley Dorsett. In their annotated bibliography they list The Chronicles of Narnia in the new order and claim that this is "the order in which Lewis preferred that they be read" (115). Since this is the book that includes the letter that started all this baloney, this review is the place for me to get up on my soapbox and denounce it. So here goes. The only evidence that Lewis wanted his books reordered to convey a chronological history of Narnia ~ the sole piece of evidence ~ is a letter he wrote in reply to an eleven year old boy named Laurence on April 23, 1957. Little Laurence suggested that the seven books be read in chronological order and Lewis replied "I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than with your mother's" (68). (Laurence's mother believed they should be read in publication order.) Lewis goes on to say that when he wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he had no intention to write any more Narnia books. "So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them" (68). The decision to reorder these books, then, hinges on nothing more than a letter Lewis wrote to a child. He lived for six more years after writing this letter, yet in those six years he did not make the change. If he really did prefer chronological order, why didn't he make the change? Could it be that he didn't actually have a preference for chronological order? That perhaps he was simply acknowledging and validating the preference of a clever child? Earlier I said that Lewis writes to children much as he would to adults, that he doesn't condescend to them, and my own statement might be used against me to claim that Lewis would not have validated Laurence's preference if he didn't truly agree with it. However, I do not believe there is a contradiction here. To be polite is not to condescend. Lewis does sometimes disagree with the children who write to him. In particular, he critiques Joan's stories and poems, often giving her practical writing advice (80, 87, 103). He does this with sensitivity to the young writer's feelings. But his correspondence with Laurence is quite different. Laurence is not submitting his own writing to Lewis for appraisal. He is expressing a preference for reading in chronological order. There is no reason for this preference to be criticized. I can't imagine Lewis writing: 'Dear Laurence, How positively stupid of you to read the books in chronological order. Stop doing so immediately. Yours, C. S. Lewis.' Furthermore, if the argument that a single comment in a letter to a child is to be taken as proof of the author's preference, then what of this comment he makes to Penny on April 13, 1957: "Thanks for your letter and the pictures. You draw donkeys better than Pauline Baynes does" (67)? Should the illustrations by Pauline Baynes be replaced by little Penny's drawings? In a letter to Martin on January 22, 1957, clearly in response to some question or concern Martin had about Susan Pevensie, Lewis writes: "... perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end ..." (67). This comment is written by Lewis after the final Narnia book had been published. Should The Chronicles of Narnia be rewritten to include Susan getting to Aslan's country? Lewis always encourages the children in their creativity and I think his comment to Laurence should be read in the same vein as his comments to Penny and Martin. The editors of Letters to Children include a footnote to the letter to Laurence that says "Lewis later reaffirmed his preference for Laurence's sequence" (68). They cite Walter Hooper's book Past Watchful Dragons. There Hopper writes: "However, the right sequence as Lewis caused me to copy it down is this: The Magician's Nephew (1955), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), The Horse and His Boy (1954), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' (1952), The Silver Chair (1953), and The Last Battle (1956)" (32). But only a little later Hooper writes: "For the purpose of following, as it were, the mental processes of the author, I have chosen to summarize the books in the order in which they were written" (32-33). That order, of course, is the one generations of Narnia fans experienced, the one that begins with the Pevensie children discovering the entrance to Narnia in the old wardrobe, a discovery spoilt by reading The Magician's Nephew first. To my mind, Hooper's statement that Lewis considered Laurence's order to be the "right sequence" is undermined by his decision to summarize the books in publication order. By doing so, he demonstrates that the order in which Lewis wrote the books is the best order to experience the books. By reading the books in the order that presents "the mental processes of the author," the reader experiences what Lewis experienced, the reader discovers Narnia as Lewis discovered Narnia. And isn't that what we want? Don't we want the magical experience that Lewis had when he discovered in his mind the "picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood" (On Stories 53)? Now I'm not saying that someone who decides to read the books in chronological order is doing anything wrong. What I am saying is that chronological order should not be presented to new readers as the "right sequence" to read the books. If I had not read these books in the 70s, if I were a newbie and I read that the author preferred the books to be read in chronological order, I would have definitely read them in chronological order. After all, I would say to myself, who better to tell me how to experience these books than their author? The result would have been that the magical discovery of Narnia through the eyes of the Pevensie children would have been lost. Rereaders might enjoy reading the prequel first, but first time readers should not be robbed of the experience of discovery. Prequels, by their nature, are not meant to be read first. On the contrary, prequels come into being when the history of something comes to be of interest and this only happens after that something is already known and loved. Only then does one ask, how did this come to be? I wonder if next we will all be told to read The Silmarillion before The Hobbit.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-09 00:00:00 Herbert Vazquez I just love Lewis. If he writes it, I read it. These letters are especially chatty and full of life. In fact, being a somewhat over the top Lewis fan, I even cried when the letters were on my birthday, and as if I did not know the ending of the story I cried at the end too. There was something emotional about reading letters a person wrote not knowing their own expiration date. Maybe we are doing that very thing right now. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Lewis's letters to a young writer named Joan. He treats almost as an adult Inkling in his no-holds-barred reviews of her writing. I wonder what became of Joan. She didn't seem to give up after some very hard words from Lewis. They wrote back and forth over many years. Where are you, Joan?