Has at least one of your children read these books?

[gaillardia]

After recess every day my 5th grade teacher would read to us from the Narnia books.

Yes, some of my children have read the Narnia books.

Yes, all of my children have read the LOTR books, including The Hobbit, and one has read The Silmarillion (did I spell that correctly?)

I had an awesome set of the trilogy given to me when I was in 8th grade but unfortunately it got sort of ruined.

 

[Tanaqui]

You are correct.  You don't need to know about the authors, you can just read whatever you want into the texts and make it so.  You can tell by the responses that 99% of the people on here like these books so I guess you are the minority.  There are things in these books that are somewhat hidden, but they are all Christian meanings... nothing more.

 

I'm not reading into the texts what isn't there. Perhaps you are not seeing what is there because of your love for the books. People tend to have warm feelings towards the books they enjoyed in childhood, before they could analyze the messages they were getting, especially if those books were given to them by beloved relatives or read to them by their favorite teachers. It's normal to get emotional about it, but really, my view is not a personal attack. I stated my opinion. I then backed it up. There's no debate here, especially not with somebody who doesn't seem interested in actually debating. If you can actually refute my points, go ahead, but I might not reply.

 

Many of the people who voted in this particular poll haven't given those aspects much thought. What of it? There are other people who have, and you can google some of them up if you please. Several of them provide much more evidence than I could manage. My opinions aren't determined by a popularity contest, though, so it really doesn't matter if you agree with me or nobody agrees with me or the whole world agrees with me. That's not a method of determining truth.

[Melissa in Australia]

None of them have read Narnia

 I have read The Lord of the Rings as a read aloud to them in a epic 5 weeks, where by the end I had lost my voice

[happypamama]

My oldest is 12. I read all seven Narnia books to her and her brother when they were 4 and 7. She has since reread them, or at least parts of them, and I am currently reading them to the crew again.

 

My oldest read Fellowship to herself when she was seven. She has not read the others. I am planning for us to read them, either as a family, or DD and DS1, in a year or two.

[Carrie12345]

I don't know if any of mine have read *all of the Narnia books, but at least one has read most of them and four have read at least one.

 

I have one who just started with LOTR, so I can't really claim she's read a whole one yet.

[Amy in NH]

I don't need to know about the authors, I can get what I need to from the text. When the baddies in the Narnia books are clear Arab archetypes and they are barbaric and only stop being awful if they convert to the Christian-and-European analog that is Narnia, those details speak for themselves.

 

When Aslan says outright that girls can't get involved in fighting - even if their little brothers can - because it's "ugly", that speaks for itself.

 

When Susan is banished from Heaven, aka Narnia for the crime of growing up and being interested in make-up and boys (and no sympathy for the fact that, as far as she knows, her entire family DIED that day), that speaks for itself.

 

As for Lord of the Rings, when only 19% of the characters are female, and most of THOSE do absolutely nothing after being introduced, that speaks for itself.

 

When the evil orcs (and a race of people that's Always Chaotic Evil is problematic in and of itself, even if has NO clear real-world analog) are described as "Mongol-types" and using scimitars, that speaks for itself. When the baddies tend to be from darker populations and the good guys tend to be from lighter skinned ones, that, too, speaks for itself.

 

When I say these things, I am not saying that either author was a bigot. I'm sure they were perfectly nice people. But they were a product of their culture, as we all are, and their culture was overwhelmingly sexist and racist, and it shows in their works.

 

If I were raising white children in the 1950s, that might not be a problem. I'm not. I'm raising biracial girls in the 2010s. There's a lot of diverse fiction out there. I'm not encouraging them to pick up problematic works simply because they've been around a long time and I read them as a child (and was concerned as a child about the same things I say here). If they read Earthsea instead of Narnia, The Conch Bearer instead of LotR, it does them no harm. Might do them some positive good - to be perfectly frank, in the choice between C. S. Lewis or Ursula LeGuin, LeGuin is by far the superior author.

 

Agree.  If you were able to pick out those themes as a child, your kids probably can too.  If your kids are old enough, you might choose to read them anyway and use it as a teachable moment.

[Matryoshka]

I'm not reading into the texts what isn't there. Perhaps you are not seeing what is there because of your love for the books. People tend to have warm feelings towards the books they enjoyed in childhood, before they could analyze the messages they were getting, especially if those books were given to them by beloved relatives or read to them by their favorite teachers. It's normal to get emotional about it, but really, my view is not a personal attack. I stated my opinion. I then backed it up. There's no debate here, especially not with somebody who doesn't seem interested in actually debating. If you can actually refute my points, go ahead, but I might not reply.

 

As someone who absolutely loves both these series (and has re-read them multiple times), I will still have to agree with Tanaqui.  Those themes are there.  Lewis and Tolkien were products of their time and place.  It's most overt in The Horse and His Boy (my least favorite Narnia, I have to say) with the very obvious Arab references, and in the descriptions of the Men Sauron has as his troops in the last LOTR - dark people from the south riding "Oliphants".  They are treated as not much different from Orcs, although they are human.  Wish this were not the case, but I don't think we can pretend those parts aren't there just because we wish they weren't.  And these themes are going to be much more troubling for some than others.

 

 

If they read Earthsea instead of Narnia, The Conch Bearer instead of LotR, it does them no harm. Might do them some positive good - to be perfectly frank, in the choice between C. S. Lewis or Ursula LeGuin, LeGuin is by far the superior author.

 

 

I have to say Ursula Le Guin is one of my all-time favorite authors.  I've read more of her works than either Tolkien or Lewis - actually almost everything she's ever written.  I don't know that I personally could totally skip Narnia or Middle Earth just for her, though.  Her works really challenge you and make you think - although they are fantasy and science fiction, nothing of hers offers the simple good-vs-evil escape that the Lewis/Tolkien books do; there's never any England/Shire/Narnia-as-heaven as a safe retreat.  LOTR is an Epic - it is a bit beyond mere fantasy, and it inspired/informed all the world-building scifi/fantasy that came after it, I'd say including LeGuin.

[dirty ethel rackham]

I had to vote "Other" for the Lord of the Rings books.  Ds20 has read just about every book Tolkien has ever written, not just the Lord of the Rings.  He is a Tolkien fanatic (and is very disappointed by the Hobbit movies.)  He liked the first Narnia book, but then raced through the series.   At 10 years old, he wanted to see the Lord of the Rings movies, but I told him he had to read the books first.  I thought that was going to buy us a year.  After 3 weeks, he told me he was done.  I though he meant Fellowship of the Ring.  Nope.  He read all 3. And I nearly had to put tape over his mouth to keep him from telling us every difference between the books and the movies.  Since then, he read everything he could get his hands on by him.   

 

Ds18 could not stand the Narnia books and liked the Lord of the Rings books, but not nearly as much as older brother.  Dd never got around to reading Narnia.  I we missed the window where they would have been appealing to her.  She liked LOTR and The Hobbit.  She was irked that the there weren't more female characters, but understands that they were products of their time.  She does like the fact that Peter Jackson took liberties with the original materials to add strong female characters to the movies. 

 

Edited for clarity.

 

[Momof3]

We've read Narnia together - and the kids absolutely loved them. (I knew they would b/c I love them too.) :)

 

We haven't picked up any of Tolkien's books yet... but that's definitely coming... Thinking we'll try The Hobbit when ds6 gets to 3rd grade?

 

I must say, too... I just picked up The Silmarillion again the other day... Ah. :) I have to read just a bit at a time - so I have time to digest. :) 

[Momof3]

DP. Sorry

[Momof3]

As to the racial undertones, I agree they are there, but slight. At least in Tolkien's works, it's really only a paragraph or two that I can remember. The Horse & His Boy is more obvious. I skipped a few things when reading to the kids. We'll discuss it when I read it to them again. A lot of good classic literature has objectionable aspects...but I still want my kids to be exposed. I think it's good for them to grapple with a story they enjoy that has some objectionable elements, too. It's going to be part of life.