Narnia Watch

It appears that the filming of Prince Caspian, the second of the Chronicles of Narnia, has been cleared for take off.

As I've said before, this is my least favorite book of the series. Its construction is rather awkward (and confusing to smaller kids) and the pace drags in several places. Indeed, I often think of this story as Lewis' sophomore slump.

I can't imagine that the producers are not going to do some heavy editing to work out the kinks. I will be interested to see how they go about doing it.

YIPS from Steve: I'm just going to have to go out on a limb here and disagree---the Caspian books (in particular The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) to me are the core of the series, and they are certainly the little guy's favorites. He's been Caspian the past two years for Halloween.

YIPS! Back from Robbo: Let me make clear, before it gets out of hand, that Voyage of The Dawn Treader is one of my favorite books in the series, not least because it has one of the greatest introductions in literature:

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother," but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on beds and the windows were always open.

Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.