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From
the November/December 2001 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Letters to the Editor A great editorial on Namia ("Bring Out Your Dead," July/August 2001). But what can we expect? This is the age of the "knock-off," after all. Why invent a better suitcase, can of dog food, or blue jeans? Just imitate it, give it a similar name, and caveat emptor. Why give new authors a chance to be creative? The old reliable authors die or get tired — that's okay. Just hand it on to someone else who will do as told, and the publisher can make another mint. Pity the poor kids and parents who don't know the difference. It just makes me sputter, and I hope Diana Wynne Jones et al. will give HarperCollins the answer they need. As for me, if this happens, I will look at imprints more closely and make very judicious and judgmental purchasing decisions. Mary I. Purucker
There seems to be a rumor on both sides of the Atlantic that HarperCollins have asked me to write a new Narnia book and that I have agreed. This is not so. Neither branch of HarperCollins has approached me about this and, if they had, I would have refused. Utterly. I wish to rebut this rumor as roundly as possible — roundly, but with spikes on, because I feel very strongly that no one should write additional Narnia books. I would be very grateful if you could see your way to printing my rebuttal in The Horn Book Magazine. Diana Wynne Jones
Bravo! Your editorial in the July/August issue is outstanding. It not only emphasized a growing concern many of us have but used such splendid terms in which to describe the travesty of publishers. Lately, I have been involved in lengthy and heated arguments about the sanctity of original illustrations. I have been called old-fashioned, unable to change, and not capable of understanding that any illustration would be all right for Winnie the Pooh. As you described Lewis rolling in his grave, I imagined many gravesites — those of Wilder, Grahame, Milne, Shepard, and others, roiling and quaking. Would that they could return just long enough to be heard by those who defile their ideas, illustrations, and words. It appears that there are so many holes in the dam and too few of us willing to try to quell the flood. Mary D. Lankford
Just wanted to drop in my two cents' worth on the controversy surrounding the possible "secularization" of the Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis. I was introduced to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in third grade by my public school teacher who read it to us daily after lunch. Between third and sixth grade, I checked the book out no less than five times; eventually I read the entire series. Some years later, I became a born-again Christian. While browsing in a Christian bookstore for the first time, I came across the Namia books. I remarked to the owner of the store how cool it was that she carried some good fiction (Christian-oriented fiction often lacks in quality). When she told me the books were Christian allegories, my jaw dropped open. I always simply thought of them as one of the greatest fantasy epics of the English language. (By the way, until I was twenty-five, I always read Lewis's books by checking them out of public — even school — libraries, including the overtly Christian Screwtape Letters.) David A. Beirne
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