Book Review: The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

ISBN: 0064471101
Published: 1994 (originally published in 1955)
Publisher: Harper Trophy
Read May 30th and 31st, 2012
Synopsis from Goodreads:

The many readers who discovered C.S. Lewis's Chronicles through 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' will be delighted to find that the next volume in the series is actually the first in the sequence—and a step back in time. In this unforgettable story, British schoolchildren Polly and Digory inadvertently tumble into the Wood Between the Worlds, where they meet the evil Queen Jadis and, ultimately, the great, mysterious King Aslan. We witness the birth of Narnia and discover the legendary source of all the adventures that are to follow in the seven books that comprise the series.

Review:


I read The Magician's Nephew and about half of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe years ago, but for some reason, I never actually finished reading the series.  I've been meaning to for years though, so a couple of weeks ago I asked my dad if I could borrow his set of the series.  He owns a boxed-set that has them in chronological order instead of the order they were published in, so I decided to read them that way.


I think this is a great series, of course.  It's a classic children's series, and I don't think I can really say anything negative about it.  I really wish I had actually finished the whole series when I was younger though.  One thing I definitely want to say, even as a child, I got some of the biblical symbolism in the series, but now that I'm older, I realize that there's so much more of it than I realized before.  It's everywhere.  That being said, I definitely think it's an enjoyable book series no matter what religion you are.  I think most children would love the story.


The Magician's Nephew is interesting because you get to read about how Narnia was created.  Of course, I kept thinking of the creation story in the Bible the whole time.  I got the basic gist of it when I was younger, but I don't think I ever thought of the garden they go to being the Garden of Eden before or the apples being the apples from the story of Adam and Eve.


I really enjoyed The Magician's Nephew, and I'm looking forward to actually getting through the entire series this time!