Take Me Back to Narnia Y’all (Bingo – I Wish)

My 11 year old is just getting into the Chronicles of Narnia and I’m nudging him on the journey by doing a simultaneous reread of what for me was a childhood favorite. I am sure I haven’t read them since I was his age, so it’s an interesting time traveling exercise to be reading them now, as an adult. I remember them feeling formidable, foreign even, rich in both action and description, wherein I have to actively try to slow myself down in order to not accidentally skim across this little book to quickly, missing both the forest and the trees. This is my I Wish pick for a number of reasons.

Who doesn’t want to, during this eye-twitching pandemic, be somewhere, anywhere else? So first of all, brava for this bingo square. This is a double dipper for me because I long both for that age of innocence and the ability to run through a wardrobe and be whisked away to Narnia, where I could befriend Lion Jesus and wage battles with my siblings and remember our victories long since past. Because human/animal class warfare sounds like a nice respite from all this (gestures widely).

In this book, the Pevensie children are back in Narnia, but as time passes different in this reality they have become myths and man is now in charge, banishing and shunning all of the fanciful and fantasy from his realms. It’s a real bummer is what I’m saying. But Prince Caspian, the real heir to the throne, is set on restoring harmony, and with the former kings/queens of old, he just might do it. I’ll leave it at that, only to say that Lucy is the real heroine of all these stories, and her siblings don’t deserve her. Book 1, we think she is full of it and make her cry. Book 2 (or 4, as you like), we think she is full of it and make her cry. Get it together, elder Pevensies.

This is a fun read for these unprecedented times, a light bit of childhood fantasy fun for kids of all ages.