The People Have Spoken

. . . and we have changed the order of the Narnia books on the Horn Book website.

Chronologist or Publicationist?

We got an email this morning objecting to the way we sequence the Narnia books on our website. Is there any consensus in re whether the books should be read in the order they were published, or in the order that the events chronicled take place? Was Lewis just being nice when he told a young fan that, yes, it made more sense to read The Magician's Nephew before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Was HarperCollins messing with a good thing when they re-ordered the books per Douglas Gresham's instructions? I'm no Lewis scholar but sense there is a seething hotbed of fan rage beneath these questions. Small stakes always make for the most drama!

Reading by the numbers

Monica Edinger has been hosting a lively discussion stemming from Jonathan Hunt's Horn Book article, "Epic Fantasy Meets Sequel Prejudice." Sequels sure do pose questions to reviewers: can you fairly evaluate volume one of something when volume two is meant to finish the job? What if you've skipped volume one, only to find that volume two has made it worthwhile? Or one was terrific, but two doesn't do it any favors?

I once had to review a volume three of something where two had not been published (in this country). And there's the recent example of Ellen Emerson White's new Long May She Reign, sequel to an out-of-print series whose most recent entry was published in 1989 . . . .