Children's fantasy on the big screen
Two fantasy franchises teased online this weekend, both in Quicktime:
I remember the event of reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but not what happens in the book itself. I think I was in third or fourth grade, and we were over at a family friend's house in Naperville (before we moved there ourselves, many years later). The adults were playing Mah Joong or something like that, and I, being a shy and somewhat antisocial youngster, wandered the shelves of the library with my eyes. The Chronicles of Narnia paperback boxset stopped me for some reason.
By the time the adults had finished an entire four rounds of Mah Joong, I had finished the first volume. As a child, I always had a soft spot for books about children who travel alone to fantastic lands to deal with unimaginable problems. As children, we never feel that anyone, especially adults, understands the daily challenges we work through. These books use fantasy as a metaphor for these feelings of alienation, transforming rites of passage into larger-than-life confrontations with mythical beasts. It's no coincidence that the mysteries in the Harry Potter books/movies are never solved by the teachers at Hogwarts, some of whom seem incompetent. Adults may appreciate the books/movies, but they are written from a child's perspective, with a youth's sensibility.