The Lamp Post

Last Thanksgiving, my son said, "Mom, stand right there. I want to take your picture." When he downloaded it, he (being much more efficient than I ever am) tagged the photo "lamppost." When I asked him why, he looked at me like I was momentarily out of my mind, which I certainly must have been. "Mom, it's the lamp post. If you wait long enough, the snow queen will pass by."
Is Narnia ever far from our thoughts? Who, having read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C. S. Lewis does not find the worlds of here and now and Narnia merging every once in a while? And along with that magic, there was, in my mind, the deeper magic of having sat side by side by side with my son and daughter and read the story aloud to them. All three of us felt it.
Lat weekend I read Gregory's Maguire's review of "The Magician's Book " A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" by Laura Miller. Titled "Young Love," it appeared in the New York Times Book Review on December 28, 2008. The reviewer quotes from the book. "The author who can make a world for a reader - make him believe that the people, places and events he describes are, if anything, truer than his real immediate surroundings - that author is someone with a mighty power indeed. Who can forget the first time they experienced this sensation? Who can doubt that every literary encounter they have afterward must somehow be colored by it? If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children' books suddenly turn up very high on the list."
This year-end reminder is worth recalling as we choose books to share with our children. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to look for the best, and offer the best to our young readers. Let them have experiences so powerful that years later, when Mom and a snowy lamp post are in the same picture, it is Narnia and the experience of reading about it that the child sees.