Journey into Narnia

Journey into Narnia. By Kathryn Lindskoog. Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing House, 1998. x + 230 pp. $15.95 (paper).

To coincide with the centennial celebration of C. S. Lewis's birth in 1998, Kathryn Lindskoog has reissued her 1957 analysis of The Chronicles of Narnia accompanied by a new study guide to Lewis's classic children's tales. Lindskoog's original monograph, written shortly after the publication of The Silver Chair, won Lewis's praise at the time for being "in the centre of the target everywhere" and for communicating the "unity of all the books." The 1998 study guide, useful for the general reader, parent, or Christian educator, treats each book in the series in chronological order based on the time of narrative events. This resource provides notes on themes, events, biblical parallels, and even foods featured in individual books. Here, you can find not one, but two recipes for Turkish Delight (pp. 108-9).

Lindskoog's original study, first published in 1973 as The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land: The Theology of C. S. Lewis Expressed in His Fantasies for Children, focuses on Lewis's concepts of nature, God, and humanity as expressed in The Chronicles. Lindskoog brings together primary sources by Lewis and others close to him (Dorothy Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald) as well as relevant Bible passages, in order to characterize Lewis's Christian orthodoxy. Appropriately for an early treatment of Lewis's writing for children, Lindskoog provides a useful introduction to the beliefs embodied in the Narnian series.

Similarly, the study guide Lindskoog has added relies primarily on primary sources rather than published scholarship, providing a series of organized notes that teachers, parents, and the general Christian reader will find useful.

Providing a resource helpful to teachers, Lindskoog identifies a central theme for each book, summarizes key events, discusses a key symbol, and explains unusual vocabulary (such as the wooses in The Lion, from ouzel meaning blackbird, p. 106). She also includes a "Factual Quiz Just for Fun" and questions to encourage personal reflection. In her discussion of each book's background, Lindskoog notes the influence of Lewis's early reading of E. Nesbit's fantasies on his later writing. An appendix features a Nesbit story "The Aunt and Amabel" (1908), about a girl who embarks from the station Bigwardrobeinspareroom on a fantasy journey of reconciliation. Nesbit's story may have given Lewis the idea for the wardrobe in The Lion.

Parents will appreciate Lindskoog's questions for reflection while they also enjoy making Turkish Delight with their children to experience Edmund's temptation in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or cooking baked apples (microwave recipe, p. 168) to recreate the dwarfs' midnight feast in The Silver Chair.

This section takes on a devotional tone that Christian readers will appreciate as Lindskoog quotes at length in each chapter from a Bible passage that parallels each book's themes and closes the chapter with a benediction based on the spiritual challenges raised in the story.

More useful for the general reader than for Lewis scholars, Journey into Narnia provides an introduction to the theology, background, and structure of The Chronicles of Narnia that many will find a helpful resource.

SARAH J. FODOR

Evanston, Illinois

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Spring 1999
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