The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I ran across a list a couple of weeks ago (I'm a sucker for lists) and started filling my amazon.com cart with books I've never read that take place during the Advent/Christmas season. I built up to $100+ when I thought that surely I must have some books around here that fit the bill. Success! I found 6 books and may have another in the attic. The down side is I've read them all before. The up side is that they are free!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first book in a series of 7 written by C.S. Lewis. I read them aloud to The Kids when they were young and so I have fond memories associated with them.

In Narnia the White Witch has made it always winter but never Christmas.

from the dust jacket:

Welcome to Narnia, the magical land where talking animals, fauns, dwarfs, centaurs, and friendly giants live in peace and harmony. But life in Narnia is not all goodness....

When four English children accidentally enter this mysterious other world, they find themselves in a scene of dazzling snow. All is cold, silent, and forbidding, for the wicked White White has cursed the land with eternal winter and turned many of her enemies into stone. But with the arrival of the children, the little creatures of Narnia begin to come out of hiding, and rumors spread that Aslan, their beloved lion king, is on his way. Strange and wonderful events follow as the children aid the great golden lion in freeing Narnia from the White Witch's evil spell.

Illustrated with Pauline Baynes's lively line drawings, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a rich and exciting story, and a compelling introduction to the magic, mystery, and high adventure of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia.

Don't even talk to me about whether or not this book is the best place to start in reading the series. Of course it is. There's no question of that, no convincing argument otherwise, and so discussion on the topic is fruitless. If you're one of the poor saps who bought in on the other side, well, I'm sorry about that, but you are doomed to forever miss the true charm of these books. So sad.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been dramatized and is worth watching either in the 1988 BBC TV miniseries or in the 2005 theatrical presentation.