Today was the grand opening of a new part of a playground meant for children with and without disabilities. It’s called The Lions Narnia Braille Trail. It is a new addition which surrounds the existing playground in Kingsport, located at Warriors’ Path State Park. The park is called Darrell’s Dream Boundless Playground, which is described as a place where children of all abilities can enjoy nature.
The Narnia Code, a new documentary based on Dr. Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia, is something we’d heard about late last year. It’s been a few months and is now complete and ready to air. We haven’t seen it yet, but you can watch a preview video for it here.
It is airing on BBC1 this upcoming Thursday, 16 April from 10:35-11:35pm.
A few weeks ago I noticed that some of the C.S. Lewis books were getting new cover art on Amazon.com. I ignored it at first, but I have seen it reported on in a number of places and thought it would be good to alert readers of this website about them as well.
Now, some sites are reporting that there are 9 books receiving new covers, whereas the official C.S. Lewis book website says “Collect all 10 beautiful new editions of C.S. Lewis’s greatest works.” I’m doing some digging to find out if it is, in fact, 10 books receiving the new cover art.
Two of the biggest Christian actors are slated to star in a film about two of the 20th century’s most prominent Christian writers. Actors Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains, Left Behind, and Fireproof), and Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon, Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ) are slated to star as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in an upcoming still untitled movie.
Part C. S. Lewis-biography, part literary analysis, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia is, at its heart, the story of a journey. The first step came when its author, Laura Miller, was given a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by her second grade teacher. Today a well-respected writer and literary critic, Miller looks back at the spell this book cast on her and at how it shaped the reader and the person she has become.
Like all journey stories, some parts will be familiar and some will not. Most Narnia fans will be able to relate to Miller’s account of how the Chronicles of Narnia changed the way she looked at the world. They will identify with Miller’s deep desire to be Lucy, “that rare creation, a character who is good without being a prig or a bore.”
But these are side trips, not the main path in a book which promises to reclaim Narnia “for the rest of us,” this meaning readers who, like Miller, loved Narnia as young people but then felt “tricked, cheated, and betrayed” after they discovered that many Narnian themes mirrored themes found in Christianity.
Anyone not belonging to this “rest of us” group may find it hard to understand why this discovery produced so much anger and bitterness in Miller. Although she devotes most of her book to describing her rocky relationship with the Narnia books, she is never able to articulate exactly why learning that they represent C. S. Lewis’s attempt to put his most foundational beliefs into story form “horrified” her.
Would she have felt so horrified had she discovered Lewis was a Buddhist?
It is of common knowledge that both Lewis and Tolkien took part in the First World War, and that in the years following the conflict they became distinguished scholars of the English language and literature at Oxford University. Those who accuse these writers of escapism tend to overlook the fact that such a curriculum vitae would make it virtually impossible for them to remain ignorant of, and not to at least in some way reflect in their own writing, the events that changed the world and the literature in the first half of the twentieth century. This paper aims to offer a new approach to the place of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings in this common context, and also to discuss how these works differ from each other with reference to the way in which they combine Christian and pagan elements.
Darren Jacobs was kind enough to forward another update on the C.S. Lewis 2009 Tour. The update comes by way of the C.S. Lewis Society.
We have added a new and exciting dimension to our C.S. Lewis Society’s tour, “The Path of C.S. Lewis and British Christianity.” Douglas Gresham, the step-son of C.S. Lewis, will be our special guest for the Oxford portion of our nine-day educational tour of England, May 31st through June 8th, 2009. He will personally accompany us as we visit the colleges at Oxford, tour the Kilns (Lewis’s and Douglas’s home in Oxford,) and enjoy an evening meal at the Trout Inn, where J. R. R. Tolkien ate often with “Jack.” He will travel with us as we visit the Eagle and Child Pub, where Lewis gathered with his Christian soul mates, the “Inklings.” It is an incredible honor for our society to have Mr. Gresham with us, who is co-producer of the two recent Narnia Disney films. It is gracious of him to share with us his personal life-memories of his years with C.S. Lewis.
The C. S. Lewis Society is delighted to present “The Path of C. S. Lewis and British Christianity,” a nine-day educational tour of England, May 31st through June 8th, 2009. With its main focus on Oxford and Cambridge, the trip has been designed to touch minds and hearts –to inform and transform. By tracing the remarkable spread of the gospel in Great Britain and beyond-and C.S. Lewis’s unique role in that advance-we seek to inspire a vision of what God can do yet again, facing today’s challenges.
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