Caroline McAlister

My boss was skeptical of this book. When she saw I was looking at it, she immediately wondered if it would have a religious skew. The answer is no; it does not. But then again, when you read at the end, I get the symbolism.

I loved learning a teeny bit more about C.S. Lewis and his brother. There is an awesome information page at the back of the book that gives even more details. Truly, I think C.S. Lewis is a fascinating individual and I want to read more about him.

The illustrations are soft and muted which I feel captures the essence of this book. It's lowkey. It doesn't set out to have an agenda. It's just fun.… (mehr)

Finding Narnia: The Story of C.S. Lewis and His Brother Warnie is a picture book biography written by Caroline McAlister and illustrated by Jessica Lanan. It briefly tells the big-picture, broad-strokes story of C.S. Lewis's imaginative, creative, and physical life, from his childhood to his middle age (when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia). It focuses a bit more on young Jack and Warnie's fantasy kingdoms that they made up, and how they joined them so they could play together. I learned a few things, such as that Warnie was the one who typed the manuscripts of The Chronicles of Narnia, which CSL handwrote! The illustrations appear to be watercolor, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an illustrator's note after the story where Jessica Lanan wrote about going to these places in Lewis's life (the Kilns, Oxford, etc.) and how she patterned places and objects to look like the real thing. She includes endnotes about liberties she took (for example, she painted the wardrobe that inspired THE wardrobe lighter than the one in real life, in order to show off the carved details). I appreciated this, and the illustrator's notes made me like this book even more. This book was a real treat, and CSL fans will love it. It deals with Narnia less than the title suggests, but Narnia fans will like this too, I think. I'm not sure how kids will like it past Jack & Warnie's childhoods.
Trigger warnings for this book: death, war mentions, wound mention, grief mention, atheism and Christianity… (mehr)