woolybear Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 I started looking for a companion guide and discovered there are so many! Do any of you have any recommendations? Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmschooling Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 My dd8 loves this guide. It's helped her really dig deeply into them and understand the author's meaning and the plots much better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolybear Posted December 11, 2009 Author Share Posted December 11, 2009 Thank you. I'm going to check that one out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdeveson Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 Any favorite secular guides? The one recommended above appears to support a Christian worldview. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionfamily1999 Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=525361&item_code=WW&netp_id=377702&event=ESRCN&view=details On sale, $1. I love it, the other family I gave a copy to loves it too! It's Christian. I'm not sure you'd find a secular guide, if only because the parallels are Christian. It was written as a sort of children's guide to Christianity and God. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crl Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 We also have the Roar guide. We haven't had a chance to use it yet, but just flipping through it it looks nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdeveson Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=525361&item_code=WW&netp_id=377702&event=ESRCN&view=details On sale, $1. I love it, the other family I gave a copy to loves it too! It's Christian. I'm not sure you'd find a secular guide, if only because the parallels are Christian. It was written as a sort of children's guide to Christianity and God. I'm hoping to find a guide that doesn't include the dogma -- I guess that's what I was looking for. I teach the Bible and other sacred texts as great books, not as the word of God. (We're atheists.) So I'd love to find a guide that will help us explore all the wonderful Christian symbology without promoting Christian world view. Also, as an aside, Wikipedia disagrees that the author wrote these books to teach Christianity. In addition to numerous traditional Christian themes, the series borrows characters and ideas from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as from traditional British and Irish fairy tales.and C.S. Lewis was an adult convert to Christianity and had previously authored some works on Christian apologetics and fiction with Christian themes. However, he did not originally intend to incorporate Christian theological concepts into his Narnia stories. As he wrote in Of Other Worlds: Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory[8] and the author of The Allegory of Love, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This indicates Lewis' view of Narnia as a fictional parallel universe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crl Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 Even as a Christian, I agree that he did not set out for these books to become some great Christian story. Though as a Christian, I feel that you can easily pull a lot of great content out of his stories. I'm sorry I missed where you said you would prefer the reference material to be not a Christian view. Just as a side note: there is also some disagreement as to his Christian background. I've read a few books lately where it seems as though he was trained in it as a young child, but then had a period where he was not professing to be a Christian. Finally, later in his life he came back to the way he was taught as a child and made a profession of faith. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionfamily1999 Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 He had started out in church, but from what I've read it was a sort of vague, may parents are therefore I am situation. His mother's death and subsequent events led him to athiesm. It seems to me that he wrote with Christ in mind. And, I wish I had time to dig up quotes, I could've sworn I read that the intention was to make God and everything else more attainable and understandable. Yes, it's a parallel universe where Jesus is a lion and God is his father over the sea. I still don't know of any secular resources though :p Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yvonne Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 I could've sworn I read that the intention was to make God and everything else more attainable and understandable. Yes, it's a parallel universe where Jesus is a lion and God is his father over the sea. I've read that too. In fact, the sentence just before the wikipedia quote above reads: "The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales." Not that wikipedia is an authoritative source. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolybear Posted December 11, 2009 Author Share Posted December 11, 2009 Even as a Christian, I agree that he did not set out for these books to become some great Christian story. Though as a Christian, I feel that you can easily pull a lot of great content out of his stories. I'm sorry I missed where you said you would prefer the reference material to be not a Christian view. I think the person you were responding to here is tdeveson, not the op (me:)). However, I was interested in hearing about both Christian and secular books on this subject. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionfamily1999 Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 I've read that too. In fact, the sentence just before the wikipedia quote above reads: "The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales." Not that wikipedia is an authoritative source. :) Thank you! I knew I'd read that all over the place, but I've read so many of his books for adult lately, that I couldn't remember where I'd read it specifically ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yvonne Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 Thank you! I knew I'd read that all over the place, but I've read so many of his books for adult lately, that I couldn't remember where I'd read it specifically ;) I think he also addresses the subject in his "Letters to Children," but I'm not positive. Wikipedia does include this quote from one of Lewis' letters... "This indicates Lewis' view of Narnia as a fictional parallel universe. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in December 1958: ...In reality, however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all. Although Lewis did not consider them allegorical, and did not set out to incorporate Christian themes in Wardrobe, he was not hesitant to point them out after the fact. In one of his last letters, written in March of 1961, Lewis writes: Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He [Christ] would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; (b) Christ is called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; © I'd been having strange dreams about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this. The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia. The Lion etc the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption. The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep). The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape). the end of the world and the Last Judgement." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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