C.S. Lewis’ Letters to Children

C.S. Lewis received many fan letters from children about his beloved Narnia books. Many of these letters were not only admiration for the books, but also full of questions children had about the stories. Children also sent him their own illustrations of their favorite parts of his books. C.S. Lewis felt that responding to the children’s letters was his “God-given duty”. After his death many of his responses were collected and compiled into a book, Letters to Children. These are his responses to their questions and comments, their thoughts on all things in and outside of Narnia, but the focus of many letters were on Narnia, the spiritual reality within these stories, and the craft of writing itself.

These letters were collected and put into a book form so that children might continue to have their Narnia (and other topical) questions answered. This book was designed to be read by children, as the letters themselves were written to children. If you can find a copy I would suggest you pick one up and read it along with your Narnia Summer reading for the church One Read.

The book begins by telling a story about Lewis’ childhood and his journey to eventually writing his Narnia books. The events, people and books in his life that developed his vivid imagination, and his love for story writing.

Some of my favorite letters are where he talks about watching animals, mice in his university office, cats, rabbits, squirrels etc.  My Dear Sarah-Thank you very much for sending me the pictures of the Fairy King and Queen at tea (or is it breakfast?) in their palace and all the cats (what a lot of cats they have! And a seperate table for them. How sensible!)  … I am getting to be quite friends with an old Rabbit who lives in the Wood at Magdalen [College]. I pick leaves off the trees for him because he can’t reach up to the branches and he eats them out of my hand. One day he stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws against me, he was so greedy. I wrote this about it;

A funny old man had a habit   of giving a leaf to a rabbit.    At first it was shy   But then, by and by,    It got rude and would stand up to grab it.

July 16th 1944

In another letter to his niece he tells her about how he can only draw a cat from the back, that faces of most animals are too difficult for him to draw but human faces are easy. He does little illustrations to show her what he is good at and what he likes to draw.

Lewis answers questions such as: Dear Hila, …The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is not to be the last: There are to be 4 more, 7 in all. Didn’t you notice that Aslan said nothing about Eustace not going back? …

Dear Fifth Graders, I’m glad you liked the Narnian books and it was very kind of you to write and tell me. … You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books “represents” something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim’s Progress but I’m not writing in that way. I did not say to myself, “Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia”: I said “Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.” If you think about it, you will see that is quite a different thing. … (later in the letter he tells the children what he looks like, they must have asked) I am tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

The only way for us to get to Aslan’s country is through death, as far as I know: perhaps some very good people get just a tiny glimpse before then.

Best love to you all. When you say your prayers sometimes ask God to bless me,

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis (May 29th 1954)

I think this is one of my favorite letters, because he takes seriously answering their questions and talks about such deep subjects (death, sin, Heaven, Aslan, God and Jesus) with them. And yet he also is quite funny when describing himself.

Finally one of my favorite series of letters is when he begins corresponding with a family of eight siblings. The children have been reading the books together and decide to write him together. They send him lots of little things and pictures of their imaginings of the Narnia stories. One of my favorite parts of the letters is when he makes comments on the size of their family:

You are a fine big family! I should think your mother sometimes feels like the Old-Woman-who-lived-in-a-Shoe (you know that rhyme!).

___________________________________________________-

Please check the Narnia VBS resource area in the foyer as I will make available a delightful series of letters between Lewis and a mother who is worried her son loves Aslan more the Jesus. This is a wonderfully honest and beautiful series of letters that I think you all will enjoy reading together at the dinner table one evening.