Laura's Tolkein and Lewis Project

  Welcome, officially, to “Laura’s Tolkien and Lewis Project.” I tried and tried to come up with a clever name but then I decided I didn’t care and I gave up. This is the first official post, and we begin (of course) at the beginning. I love how “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” begins. No, not the line about the four children, (although that is a classic) but the preface—the letter to his goddaughter Lucy. “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Same, Lucy. Same. I am now old enough to start reading fairy tales again. Let’s have some fun. The first two chapters of LWW remind me why I have always loved these books. They are magic. Wardrobes are magic. England is magic. London is magic. It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are or where you live, “here and now” is ordinary and boring with roads and cars and jobs and taxes…but London, England is absolutely fucking magical.   The western world has thought this for nearly a hundred years, ...

  “Once there were four children, and their names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.” I’m 7, sitting on the green shag rug in our living room, listening to my mom read a chapter before bedtime. Tonight’s book is “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and I am transfixed from the very first sentence. One chapter at a time my mother takes my sisters and I from London to the giant house in the countryside to Lantern Waste, through the “Spare Oom” and the magical “war drobe.” We meet fauns, talking Beavers, and A Lion. Nay….THE Lion. We learn of a treat called “Turkish delight” and decide it must just taste like magic. (Spoilers: sometimes it just tastes like perfume. I’m very, very sorry about this.) We meet bumbling Giants and helpful mice. Chapter after chapter of enchantment and adventure and MAGIC until the Pevensies find themselves—most unfortunately—back on this side of the wardrobe. Mom doesn’t realize it, but she has awakened something in my sisters and I, not only a love ...