This week I finished reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis aloud to my daughter. And thus we finished reading the complete Chronicles of Narnia together.
I've read these books many times, but there's just something about a good story read aloud. Even if I'm reading it more to myself than my daughter. It also set a good tone for reading together each day. She used to ignore me and play while I read. But in the last few months, she took that time to bring me books to read to her while I was reading. So our reading of the Chronicles of Narnia was interspersed with readings of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Bob and Larry's ABCs (a Veggie Tales ABC book that is her favorite--she calls it Bob).
Next I'm going to read aloud her Beatrix Potter collection that my mom gave her. After that, I have no idea. But it's a habit that I want to keep up.
And now for The Last Battle. It is the only Narnia book that I didn't read and reread as a child. I read it once and never picked it up again. When I read it this time, I remembered what I didn't like about it.
Spoiler Alert: Susan is taken out of it. She is "no longer a friend of Narnia" and has become preoccupied with nylons and lipstick. She was always the most skeptical of the Pevensie kids, and C.S. Lewis might have been trying to make a last days of Narnia thing realistic by not having every person we know end up in "Aslan's country." But I didn't like it. Susan is by no means my favorite character, but it still made me wonder what C.S. Lewis had against her to turn her into a snob and leave her out. If I ignored that fact, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I did the first time.
This is the only one I didn't reread as a child too! And poor Susan.
ReplyDeleteI've only read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I think it's a wonderful idea that you're reading to your daughter. I'm sure she'll grow up loving books as much as you do. :)
ReplyDelete