Author: Becky

Taking a suggestion from Mark for coloring that might include history and England…

C.S. Lewis was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. You might know him best because of The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with the first novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London during the Blitz*, they live with a professor in his house in the countryside. There, they discover a wardrobe that’s a portal to a magical land named Narnia.

The coloring pages I did below, of the wardrobe, can be found on the copyright page and last page of this lovely coloring book.

I didn’t read the Narnia series as a child. I was introduced to it by my college roommate Debbie, who I think gave me a paperback set for a birthday or Christmas. I then told Lynne about the series because both of us read fantasy as teens and young adults, specifically The Lord of the Rings novels (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Sword of Shannara trilogy (Terry Brooks).

Years later, when I worked at a bookstore, badly damaged books were often marked 50% off, and that’s how I was able to afford my hardcover collection on my meager salary. While they may not be the prettiest, they came to me gently loved and remain loved.

Debbie’s recommendation also began my fascination with lions thanks to Narnia’s Aslan. Aslan is the reason my father did this for me in pen and ink:

And Lynne’s sister Liz did this ceramic piece for me:

And Debby gave me this canvas print by artist Leonid Afremov as a recent Christmas gift.

*The whole lion fascination was a detour. Back to British history. Long before I read C.S. Lewis, I’d read books about children who were evacuated to the English countryside as well as to the United States to stay with host families during World War Two. The Blitz is the term for Germany’s bombing raids of cities and towns in England from September 1940 to May 1941. In London during that period, there were 57 consecutive nights of bombing. People wore gas masks and used blackout curtains. They were on food and petrol rations, and volunteers patrolled the streets at night to sound warnings and make sure people got safely inside shelters during air raids. Civilians, including women, drove ambulances, helped rescue people trapped in bombed houses, and tended to wounds as they could. Mark, in a comment you left on Mindful Monday’s post, you pinpointed some of the qualities that explain why I have so much love and admiration for your country and its people.

Because of my interest in that period of history, there’s a backstory for a brother and sister in the Neverending Saga that includes being sent to live with relatives in rural England during the war. Though their parents were killed in a London bombing after the Blitz, just in London alone, 30,000 residents lost their lives during the Blitz.