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Advice to an Intelligent Reader
from an Intelligent Reader or
Reading This Will Make You Smarter

This book has many spoilers! Please read the Chronicles ofNarnia first. Only then read this Pocket Companion. I can't beyour companion until you have "gone there" first.

C. S. Lewis wrote these books for you, and he meantyou to read them with your head and your heart and yourfeelings. The books are so exciting that you will probablyrace through them the first time. OK.

But when you reread them, pay attention to the colorwords, the verbs, the adjectives, and the adverbs.

Try to avoid looking for hidden meanings, as if theChronicles were codebooks.

C. S. Lewis was very careful not to decode the Chroniclesfor the children who wrote him about their meaning.Typical of his responses is the answer he made to HilaNewman when she wrote to him about the meaning of theending of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

In Which Order Should the
Chronicles Be Read?

The Order by Year of First Publication --
the Canonical Order

Before 1994 there was only one reading order, what scholarshave come to call the canonical order, the order in whichthe chronicles were first published, and they were numberedaccordingly:

So, although C. S. Lewis completed The Horse and HisBoy before The Silver Chair, the latter was published first, inorder to keep together the triad of books in which Caspianis a major character . . .

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Excerpted from Pocket Companion to Narnia: A Concise Guide to the Magical World of C. S. Lewis by Paul F. Ford
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.