Narnia Forever

Ok last Narnia post for a while, I promise.  I was looking back over The Last Battle post and noticed it was kind of depressing and that is not how I want to end my great Narnia reread.  So I will use this opportunity to ramble on about the series as a whole in a completely disjointed all over the place manner.
Obviously the main reason I love this series for me is that it was my introduction to reading, my first glimpse of the fantasy genre, and my first understanding what good writing was.  I was honestly around 6 years old when I read these for my self the first time and they have stuck with me ever since.  These are the books that helped shape my taste in reading, let me use my imagination, and taught me I could fall in love with places and people that only exist as ink on a page. Even at that young age, books affected my mood and daily living.  I remember after finishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (LWW) I was so excited.  I was pushing on the back of every closet I could find, I would make up games where we would defeat the white witch, my siblings were so sick of playing Narnia games I was always Susan (she was always my favorite) and since there were four of us I would make my brother Peter, one sister Lucy, and the other poor sister had to be Edwina (a female version of Edmund) :-).

I moved on to Prince Caspian (PC) and got my first hit of book melancholy.  I was so sad that everything my friends (because at this point Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy were without a doubt my friends) had held dear was gone, so many years had passed that all there friends were dead, and the things that made Narnia so magical were hunted to near extinction.  When at the end of the book Peter and Susan were told they could never come back, I was crushed.  On the happy side I also got my first book crush and for the longest time whenever we played games that required a prince, mine was always Caspian. I picked up The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (VDT) hoping to make myself feel better and man did I fall hard.  If there is a book that I am actually in love with this may be the one. Getting away from the actual country of Narnia was helpful in healing my poor bruised soul.  The introduction of Eustace gave me the feeling that the adventures would always continue.  I continued my love affair with Prince Caspian and my love of the ocean and pirates was probably born with this book.
This is the book that restored my hope in further adventures.  The Silver Chair (SC) continued the adventures, showing me new places, new people, and new ways to get to Narnia.  Now instead of just pushing on the back of closets, I would open every door, gate, peek into every hole.  This really kicked my exploring tendency into high gear.  The Horse and His Boy (HHB) took me back to my favorite time in Narnia, with the original four children.  Gave me a glimpse of the lands beyond Narnia proper and got me thinking of about the different ways people are raised. The Magicians Nephew (MN) is the perfect mix of everyday life and magic.  I loved the idea that Narnia was not the only other magical world.  This book very much inspired me to go beyond this series and see what else was out there, that magic was endless and there are always new worlds being created.  My little brain was overloaded with all the connections I was seeing to previous books, the lamppost, how the witch got there.  This may have also started my obsession with magic sparkly jewelry.
The Last Battle (LB) taught me that with all the joy that books can bring, they can also make you miserable.  I remember moping around for weeks after finishing this book.  My poor parents could not figure out why I cried myself to sleep for a couple nights after finishing it.  My young brain had a hard time separating what I was feeling from the book and what was happening in real life. I still remember the trauma of it every time I read it.
These were the reactions I very clearly remember having the first time I read them. I have read them all (even LB) several times over the years and many of those initial reactions remain, the magic and wonder, the melancholy, the thrill of discovery, the trauma, but as my life has progressed I have also picked up on some other things.  I have decided I like the way C.S. Lewis deals with girls.  He is constrained to some degree by the time period, but he never makes them weak.  He keeps the balance between chivalry and practicality quit well.  More often then not he has his female characters dressing in armour along with the men and boys and heading into battle.  He does sometimes purposely separate them out and take them away from the whole sale slaughter portions of the battles, but always to go on an important mission that usually saves the boys butts, not to be sheltered and protected.  I also like that he tends to give his females a choice.  I remember in particular in HHB Queen Susan is one of the best archers in the land, but she chooses to stay out of battle, preferring not to get involved and stay on the social/political side of things.  Queen Lucy on the other hand is not nearly as skilled in combat, but chooses to be part of the battle anyways.  The author makes both of these decisions equally ok, neither of the girls is derided for wanting to be feminine, nor for wanting to act like a man.  Through out the series we see females both good and evil, always able to make their own choices.  He does not equate beauty with weakness, nor does he make his characters choose one over the other.  There is several times a female character will purposely be up to her knees in mud fighting injustice and then in the next scene be excited over the pretty dress she gets to wear.  I love characters who are allowed to be all these things.  I love the male characters as well, even if

they are a bit more traditional in nature.  I love that almost all the characters have a growth arc, weather they are the children, the royals, or the magical entities nobody is written as perfect. I also love the role choice plays in all of these books, I am a huge proponent of giving everybody a choice in life, and also being responsible for the choices you make.  These books are fantastic at showing how the choice a single person makes can effect so many other people, whether you mean for it to or not.  I love the variety of places the author sends us, I love how he has a culture for every place you go.  Given some of the cultures may come across a bit stereo-typical/borderline racist, I will give him a itty bitty bit of leeway considering the time period he wrote it in, but it is a good discussion point when reading this with other people.  As traumatizing as it is, I do love that you essentially get to see the whole entire history and Narnia, from it's very creation in MN to it's brutal and violent ending in LB.  I do not know of any other series that does this.

Ok ok ok I'm done now.  I just needed to put down on paper/screen/bytes my complicated lifelong feelings for a series of 7 short books that have changed my life for the better.  Thanks for hanging in there with me, I know I can be incoherent and gushy and messy, but it's just my undying love spewing all over the place :-)
What was the first book/series that changed your life?  Do you identify with characters a bit to much like I do?  Have you ever had to remember that the book isn't real, these people and places don't actually exist?  When was the last time you checked the back of your coat closet?