A personal reflection on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — the first fantasy novel that sparked a lifelong love of reading, imagination, and adventure.
Oddly enough, it was The Hobbit. I saw the animated film when I was in elementary school but had no clue there was a book to go with it. One day I was walking through my high school library and found a book by the same name. It even had a thing in the front about now being an animated movie.
A day or two later, having finished The Hobbit, I asked the librarian if they had anything else by the same author and she walked me over to the shelf and handed me all three books of LOTR.
But it wasn't until my friend saw me reading LOTR and let me borrow his copies of the Dragonlance Chronicles that I truly fell in love with the genre though.
These were the covers that i had as a 12 y/o, and still have on one of my bookshelves. There was a Walden books down the street ( maybe a mile) that i would hit for fantasy sci-fi and history( mainly ww2) , of which i still own most of the books from that time. ( i did purge a couple thousand some time back...still have too many)
This has always been a great intro into the world of fantasy. My daughter has started reading it and is hooked. Not her first fantasy novel but first of the classics and she's now asked about The Hobbit.
It was Narnia for me too, the very set you have highlighted here, though they long ago fell to pieces and have been replaced. Funny story though: I read Narnia before owning them, and when I asked for a set (probably 5th grade) I was given the Chronicles of Prydain instead. I was so mad I didn’t open the set for months! Fortunately I got over it after a few months and read them, discovering another wonderful world to explore. But Narnia was first — it’s even the first line of my bio!
I had Narnia and LOTR, but I think the series that really opened fantasy to me was the Lone Wolf gamebook series by Joe Dever. Growing up an only child, I certainly enjoyed D&D sessions with my buddies… but it was my solo adventures, in solitary with my character sheet, trying to live through the next conflict, playing my small part in a larger world, inspired me to enjoy fantasy in general. My father also had lots of sci-fi so I enjoyed a further exploration of sci-fi with books like Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, or Star Trek novels or Integral Trees (where I read my first sex scene!) were all foundational to understanding WORLDs were out there to be built, enjoyed and discovered. But yes, the artwork of those old Narnia books seemed to capture the simple oddness of another realm, the comical yet realistic contradictions that would walk there and the “otherness” that we seek in those worlds to both escape and understand our own mundane world. Long live fantasy!
Oddly enough, it was The Hobbit. I saw the animated film when I was in elementary school but had no clue there was a book to go with it. One day I was walking through my high school library and found a book by the same name. It even had a thing in the front about now being an animated movie.
A day or two later, having finished The Hobbit, I asked the librarian if they had anything else by the same author and she walked me over to the shelf and handed me all three books of LOTR.
But it wasn't until my friend saw me reading LOTR and let me borrow his copies of the Dragonlance Chronicles that I truly fell in love with the genre though.
These were the covers that i had as a 12 y/o, and still have on one of my bookshelves. There was a Walden books down the street ( maybe a mile) that i would hit for fantasy sci-fi and history( mainly ww2) , of which i still own most of the books from that time. ( i did purge a couple thousand some time back...still have too many)
This has always been a great intro into the world of fantasy. My daughter has started reading it and is hooked. Not her first fantasy novel but first of the classics and she's now asked about The Hobbit.
It was Narnia for me too, the very set you have highlighted here, though they long ago fell to pieces and have been replaced. Funny story though: I read Narnia before owning them, and when I asked for a set (probably 5th grade) I was given the Chronicles of Prydain instead. I was so mad I didn’t open the set for months! Fortunately I got over it after a few months and read them, discovering another wonderful world to explore. But Narnia was first — it’s even the first line of my bio!
I had Narnia and LOTR, but I think the series that really opened fantasy to me was the Lone Wolf gamebook series by Joe Dever. Growing up an only child, I certainly enjoyed D&D sessions with my buddies… but it was my solo adventures, in solitary with my character sheet, trying to live through the next conflict, playing my small part in a larger world, inspired me to enjoy fantasy in general. My father also had lots of sci-fi so I enjoyed a further exploration of sci-fi with books like Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, or Star Trek novels or Integral Trees (where I read my first sex scene!) were all foundational to understanding WORLDs were out there to be built, enjoyed and discovered. But yes, the artwork of those old Narnia books seemed to capture the simple oddness of another realm, the comical yet realistic contradictions that would walk there and the “otherness” that we seek in those worlds to both escape and understand our own mundane world. Long live fantasy!