I am surprised to know several of my friends have never read the Harry Potter books or watched any of the Star Wars, OR Lord of the Rings, quite a disappointment, they've missed a lot. So much of those stories are tied into our culture no a days, it seems impossible to me that anyone doesn't know about them. My sister passed on the Harry Potter books to me, one by one as the came out, after she read them within days. I also remember watching 'The Golden Compass' when it came out in theaters as well as 'Chronicles of Narnia'. I happened to watch 'Chronicles of Narnia' with a very religious boyfriend, and therefore afterwards found out many, many things about the movie and books- which he had read- that I never would have guessed were in there. He even read 'The Golden Compass' despite it's anti-religious undertones(or overtones, they are quite obvious) he enjoyed it, mostly the fantasy quality about it. Which is something I also stuck to in the book. The fact that you can have a spirit animal is fascinating in itself, but again, my draw to fantasy is the extraordinary worlds it creates, and this book, along with Narnia, created so many for me.
Narnia itself could represent that aspect of fantasy, that there are other worlds out there, just waiting to be explored, and sometimes all you have to is open a closet in an old house, or fall down a rabbit hole... Now kids can imagine all there wildest dreams come to life in this world were anything is possible, as long as they do not sin at least. This tends to lead to evil trying to overthrow you and all, for example the gluttonous nature of Edmund leads him to naively befriend the White Witch.
Those types of lessons are underlying in the books. I think it is helpful and totally appropriate for young readers to be exposed to that kind of thinking and values. With television shows and pop culture in general getting raunchier, sexualized and violent as it is today, children need some classic value-teaching shows, movies and books especially. I'm not even confident children read good wholesome books anymore, they probably all involve werewolves or vampires, because apparently they are the only things that can keep there attention. That might be heavily generalizing, and I certainly hope it isn't true. Fantasy books teach us to use our imagination for good, teach us simple and good values and expand our knowledge and vocabulary. The more stories and worlds we experience the better storytellers we will become, and we will have a brighter future.
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