The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis (Movie/Book Review)

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS LewisTakeaway: You do not need long books to tell big stories.

The thing that keeps striking me as I read through the Chronicles of Narnia recently is how short these books are. In my imagination, these are big books, maybe not Harry Potter length children’s books, but fairly weighty tomes.

The reality is that the Chronicles of Narnia are short children’s books.  The single volume of the whole series is shorter than just Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  So it seems a bit odd to me that the movies are so long.

The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe is just over 4 hours on audiobook but 2 and a half hours as a movie.

The 2005 movie is faithful and good. But it loses some of the childhood wonders of the book.  I have been reluctant to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as I have been reading through CS Lewis because it is such a familiar story to me.  I choose to listen to it on audiobook (in part because I ran across it at the library) but also because I wanted to re-capture being read to.  This is one of the earliest books I remember being read to me.

My Mom read a lot of books to us especially as we were driving.  And I attribute much of my love for reading to those reading sessions in the car.

So in some ways, I can’t help but feel any movie pales in comparison.  And even reading a book on my own has to pale slightly too long ago memories.  Still, I am surprised how much the short story has the power to create wonder.

In a very different way, it is not unlike re-reading the later Harry Potter books for the first time since they came out a couple of months ago.  Good books still have power, even when you re-read them and approach them at a different point in life.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis Purchase Links: Kindle Edition, Paperback, Audible.com Audiobook, DVD, Instant Video Rental

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