I will always love this book because I have always loved this book.

I still have the first edition I ever read, a well worn 1969 printing with an ugly green/gray cover that sort of reminds me of the ugly panelling my parent's living room once had. (It was a creepy forest scene FYI.) My older sister checked it out of her elementary school library for something apparently called "Reading Across Broward" and she never returned it.

Before I knew anything about The Chronicles of Narnia series, or the fame of that series, I took this one book from my sister's collection and made it my own. I fell in love, from one of the best dedications of all time ("But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again") to "The End" where the children are all tumbling out of the wardrobe.



I read it and re-read it constantly, sometimes camping under my bed covers with a flashlight way past my bed time.

I've re-read this, now, for the purpose of this review, only to find I can't really review it. I love it past the point of seeing fault.

I am struck by how simple the language and the characters are, though, something I obviously wouldn't have noticed as a child. Good is good and evil is evil in this book, a concept only really challenged by Edmund's betrayal.

Lucy is still one of my favorite characters of all. It really is that childish simplicity that endears her to me. She is good, honest and brave.

Also, I'm all about reading the books in the publishing order.

Also, also, these will be bed time stories for my own children.

"It's the world, dear. Did you expect it to be small?”

So yeah. Basically it's one of my favorites.