From the Backlist: "CS Lewis Taught Me all I Know" by Janet Mullany

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Who out there also remembers the magic of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Narnia generally? We do, too, which is why we're revisiting Janet Mullany's walk down memory lane... Enjoy!

CS Lewis taught me all I know

by Janet Mullany

I love talking about kids' books and what we read when we were kids. What's fascinating too is how what you read comes back to you and how it creeps into your own work as a sort of cross-pollination ... I had a scene where a character was exploring a mysterious house and I immediately remembered a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy Pevensey has to explore such a house to find a magic spell. I haven't read this in years but I immediately remembered how Lucy caught a sight of her reflection in a mirror that was framed with a beard and thought a stranger was peering out at her... creepy!

I enjoyed CS Lewis's books a lot when I was a kid and occasionally re-read them as an adult...But, like so many other books I once loved, I now find myself reading CS Lewis with a critical eye. Even as a kid I wondered how, in a land where it is forever winter, there was any food at all, let alone tea, buttered toast, and sardines (yum! It's an English thing--that's Mr. Tumnus's high tea in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and here's a gratuitous pic of James MacEvoy whom I find alarmingly attractive even when he's a pale, freckly goatboy). I also found the "boys taking charge" thing a bit much, now and then.

 

 

I admire the way CS Lewis tied some of his loose ends up when he wrote The Magician's Nephew: he explains the origin of the wardrobe and why there's a lamp post in the middle of the Narnian woods, and where that danged White Witch came from anyway. (Okay, this is a safe place. Raise your hand if you, too, have a massive girl crush on Tilda.) That's something I love to see happen in my own writing, when something pops into my brain and onto the page and although I may not know it at the time, there's a reason and a story behind it. 

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To check in on Janet Mullaney, she has an Amazon page here & is on Good Reads here.