Lions and Witches and Wardrobes, Oh My!

I've been in a bit of a children's literature renaissance lately. It started months ago when I read L and N A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. (A most cherished gift from Grandma Gee, I might add.) Both Stacy and I have been pretty consistent about reading to the kids, but up to this point it had always been a bit of a duty for me. I mean, seriously, would you eat the #%*#@! green eggs and ham already! But with Winnie we seemed to cross a threshold. L latched on and stayed with me. She got involved and it clicked. N came willingly along for the ride, but really only looked at storytime as a convenient bedtime delay. But L became engrossed. I'd seen the flickerings there before; The Boxcar Children had been successful enough a spark to justify the reading of at least four more sequels. But Winnie fanned a true flame into being.

We loved the Hundred Acre Wood, timid yet self-righteous Piglet, not-to-be-bothered Rabbit, and of course, the Pooh of very little brain. I would try to read them with voices and for some inexplicable reason Pooh always came out sounding Irish. Stacy has since found some well done audio versions of the books and has been playing them for the kids in the car. Pooh sounds much more gravelly and appropriate. The other day N ran up to me and said, "Rum tum tiddle tum!" After smirking at my bewilderment, he explained, "That's what Pooh says!" And I've since found L repeating over and over to herself, as if it were a mantra, "How sweet to be a Cloud / Floating in the blue!"

Pooh led us on to another of my childhood favorites, To and Again by Walter R. Brooks. Vintage '20s lit, this was a story about a group of discontented farm animals who decided they should give up the farm and go to Florida for the winter. Charles the Rooster, Jinx the cat, Freddy the Pig and old Mrs. Wiggins the Cow, among others, were all extremely popular, and L and N followed them expectantly as they visited Washington (just like Daddy!) and had to deal with nasty robbers and smugglers, and even some crafty alligators in the Everglades swamps. Every time we'd get in the car over the course of the book, either L or N would have to ask if we were "migrating" like Farmer Bean's animals. One utterly peripheral character, she couldn't have been mentioned more than once, struck a strong chord with N. "Mrs. Hackenbutt!" became a giggle-filled rally cry for several weeks.

Revisiting such an old favorite of mine got my own engine primed as well, and I pulled out a copy of a children's book I'd read years and years ago and remembered enjoying. A little too old for L and N, A Day No Pigs Would Die is a wonderful coming of age story that ranks up there with Johnny Tremain and possibly even To Kill a Mockingbird. It was about a poor Shaker boy growing up on a farm in isolated and rural Vermont in the Calvin Coolidge '20s. It's one of those warm and honest types of books that have that inevitable bittersweet streak to them. (I made the mistake of reading the last two chapters while I was riding the life-cycle at the gym the other day, and I'm sure I made quite the scene sweating and blubbering away as I rode.)

As much as personally I loved The Boxcar Children and To and Again, reading A Day No Pigs Would Die gave me a craving for children's stories with some meat on their bones. Sweet, "ah shucks" books from the World War era are absolutely wonderful, but they lack enough darkness, grit and mystery to be a tolerable steady diet. I could read a few of them, but I really needed to dig into something that all children's literature really should aspire to be - an adult's story dressed as a kid's tale. For a year or more I'd been hesitating - having one book in mind, but not quite sure the time was right. I still wasn't sure, but suddenly it wasn't about the kids anymore. I needed to read it again. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had waited patiently, but it didn't seem willing to wait much longer and its beckon had an irresistibility to it. I figured L would enjoy the silly animals and N would enjoy not having to go to sleep, but I didn't know if either of the would really sink into it, and I so badly wanted them to sink into it. A week or two ago I gave up pondering and cracked it open. The first night's read seemed to lend fire to my fears. A pleasant reception, but not much out of the lukewarm realm. But the second night's read, and the second and third chapters, I began to feel a little tug on my literary fishing line. A White Witch! How scary! And yet how intriguing!

"I'll have to cover my ears when you read that part!" insisted L.

"But then you won't hear the story," I reminded her.

"I'll only cover them a little bit."

Hook line and sinker. Both of them! Now they hang on it! Every night before we read we recap the story, and both can give me, almost word-for-word, a most detailed accounting. L can give a fairly complete and accurate anatomical analysis of a faun, and even N who is always playing with some other toy, clearly not paying attention while I'm reading, was able to give quite the eye-witness account of the first encounter with Her Highness, Reputed Queen of Narnia -- what she wore and what she drove. It has been so much fun seeing how much they resonate with that character. How they squealed when she dressed down Edmund! How they cautioned him against the Turkish Delight! ("It's probably enchanted! warned L.) And now, every foreshadowing of her next appearance is met with indrawn breath and the anxious "Oh no!" I no longer have any worries; they are loving it.

But I also have no real doubts about who's really enjoying this book the most!