My Favorite Books: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Hi all! Since this week's Did You Know... featured C.S. Lewis, I figured I would talk a little about a book that he wrote. As I've mentioned many times before on this blog I am a big fan of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. A while back, I wrote about the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I thought I'd share a little bit about the third book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I first had this book read to me by my mother when I was about 12 or so. Mom used to read a couple of chapters every night after dinner while my four brothers and sisters and I were still seated at the table. She started with the first book and wound up reading through the first four or five books before I decided to read the rest on my own because she was going too slowly!

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for this book. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader only the two youngest Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy, return to Narnia. The are accompanied, unwillingly, by their cousin, Eustace Scrubb. Eustace is a real pill. Anyway, they land in the ocean and are picked up by King Caspian and hauled aboard his ship, the Dawn Treader. Caspian is on a journey to the Lone Islands and beyond to find the seven banished lords of Narnia. Along the way, they have many wonderful adventures.

As a youngster, this book really captured my imagination. I loved all of the interesting places they went and the things they did. The island of the Dufflepuds was both funny and suspenseful. The chilling waters of Death Island were fascinating, and their encounter with a dragon was unique to say the least. I also liked Eustace's journey from insufferable lout to a really nice guy.

As I said before, this book left an impression on me. In fact, I can see some similarities in the third book in my Deliverers series, The Golden Dragon of Ang. Now, the themes in my book differ from those in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but as I reread the book after writing it, I could see influences of Lewis' book sprinkled subtly throughout. For instance, the Deliverers travel across an island chain, the Dragon Islands. It contains a mysterious rhyme (Reepicheep the recited a rhyme that was said over him when he was little), they travel from island to island and have adventures. There is even talk of a dragon.

Do you have any thoughts about Voyage of the Dawn Treader or any of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia series? If so, I'd love to hear about them!

Did You Know...C.S. Lewis

This week we take a look at an author known not only as a writer of fantastic children's books, but someone who was one of the greatest religious and philosophical thinkers of the 20th century. I'm talking of course about C.S. Lewis.

Let's see what little known facts I was able to dig up about him online.

Did you know...

• His full name was Clive Staples Lewis, but his friends called him Jack? Jack was short for Jacksie, which was the name of his dog when he was a child.
• When he was young, he loved the works of Beatrix Potter? When he was a child he was so fascinated by talking animals that he and his brother made up stories about a world called Boxen which was populated by talking animals.
• When he was a teenager he became an atheist? His regained his faith in his early thirties.
• In his teenage years, Lewis was interested in Norse, Greek and Irish mythology and literature?
• He fought in World War I and was wounded by friendly fire?
• Lewis taught at both Oxford and Cambridge?
• He married Joy Davidman Gresham in 1956 when he was in his late 50's? She was an American who grew up Jewish, but became an atheist and a communist. She converted to Christianity before coming to England with her two sons after separating from her husband.
• Lewis was part of a literary discussion group called the Inklings? It included J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord David Cecil and Nevill Coghill among others. They met every Tuesday morning to discuss literature and read from their works in progress.
• Tolkien was a major influence in bringing Lewis back to Christianity, although Tolkien was Catholic while Lewis was Anglican?
• Lewis took an "everyman" approach to his explanation of Christianity and God? His writings and lectures acknowledge the difficulty some have in believing and his arguments are focused on those who find it difficult to believe. This is most likely a direct result from having walked in those same shoes himself.
• Lewis die the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated? Author Aldous Huxley died the same day as well.

Here's a trailer for the film Shadowlands, which chronicles the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman Gresham. It's a really nice film, although a tad over-dramatized.

My Favorite Books: The Hobbit

As I was thinking back over some of the books that I really enjoyed when I was young, I realized that I’ve never written about one of my favorite books of all time. While Narnia got me into the fantasy genre, and reading The Lord of the Rings sealed my fantasy addiction and became my favorite book, there was one other book that told me I was on to something.

I’m talking about The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. After racing through the Chronicles of Narnia as an 11 or 12 year old, I was looking around for another book “like Narnia”. Once again, my mother came to the rescue with a suggestion—The Hobbit. I got hold of a copy from the library and devoured it.

Not only was it a good adventure, but it was really funny in places and scary in others. I think it has the perfect combination. This was my first “quest” book, and it really does feature a classic. There are 13 dwarves trying to recover their stolen gold. Their advisor is a wizard named Gandalf who recruits a simple, stay at home hobbit to go off and have an adventure. What’s funny is that he was selected as a burglar to steal the treasure (the idea of one small person trying to steal the wealth of an entire dwarf kingdom!) and to change the number of people in the party from an unlucky 13 to 14!

Bilbo is very put out at the thought of going on an adventure. When the dwarves tell him the golden horde was stolen and is guarded by a dragon named Smaug, he’s even more reluctant. Still, he screws up his courage and decides to go, although he is almost left behind. That sets him on a path that will change his life, and the course of history.

This book fueled my hunger for books of this type and led me to its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. From there I was off. I started reading a lot of fantasy, good and otherwise. I’ll tell you about the next step on that journey next time!

Here's a look at the animated classic version from Rankin Bass:

Writing--It's Fantastic!

So, how did I get started writing fantasy, and writing it for tweens? I've always loved to read. Reading has been a staple ever since I read my first book on my own about a farmer who takes a big wheel of cheese to the market in town in a wheelbarrow, and loses it. It rolls up hill and down with the farmer chasing after it.

But that's kind of beside the point. My mother was (and is) of the opinion that a love of reading should be cultivated at a young age, and nurtured through those "difficult" middle grade years. In an effort to do this, she started reading to myself and my four siblings at the dinner table.

Every night when dinner was over, and the dishes had been cleared away, my mom would read a chapter of a book. The first book she read to us was "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, the first in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I must have been 12 or 13 and I was entranced by the book. It let my imagination take flight, and took me to places I'd never known existed. Here's a picture of the edition she read to us from:

It's the 70's version. Kind of harkens back to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. There's something a little Paul and Ringoish about Peter and Edmund.

I'd always been a fan of fantasy to some degree. In addition to my love of "Where the Wild Things Are" when I was younger, I also loved "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Phantom Tollbooth", among others. But on some level, I connected more deeply with this book.

Mom read the whole book over the course of a couple of weeks. Then, she moved on to book 2 of the Chronicles, "Prince Caspian". She read one or two more, but by the time she'd finished with book two, I'd raced far ahead. In no time, I'd devoured all seven books of the Chronicles and was looking for more.



That's when my mom suggested I check out "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. That was well and truly it. I was hooked. From there it was on to "The Lord of the Rings". Things haven't been the same since.



This started me on my way. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to write fantasy novels for children. I started right away. I made the mistake of trying to write an 8th book of the Chronicles of Narnia--not a good idea. Then, I started a fantasy epic of my own inspiration, complete with a map and everything.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't think anything has survived from that ill fated manuscript. After that I bided my time. Something else grabbed my writing attention around this time and on into high school and college--comedy. But that's a story for another day.