Thank You, Mr. Lewis

Not for inventing Narnia (though our debt cannot, perhaps, be overstated) but for being one of us, a serious adult devotee of young adult literature, even before that genre got its name.  And I owe you one, my friend, for introducing me to one of your finest colleagues whom I somehow managed to miss as a child: E. Nesbit.

I came across Ms. Nesbit's name several times while reading the biography written about you by your friends Walter Hooper and Roger Lancelyn Green.  Quickly I became intrigued: A spinner of children's yarns who kept you reading and rereading her work nearly your entire life must be worth a look.  So I looked.  I visited my local library and picked up a copy of Five Children and It (Puffin Books 2004, first published by T. Fisher Unwin 1902).  And oh, what great fun it was!

When Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane are left home alone for a few weeks one summer with only a couple of servants and their two-year-old brother, whom they call The Lamb, any reader who has been around the YA block once or twice can tell something wonderful is coming.  The best adventures result when parents leave for a bit, especially while school is out.  Better even than that scenario is one in which the novelty of a new home and neighborhood is added, which, in this case, we are overjoyed to find that it is.

And when the four children, playing one day in a sand-pit, uncover a particularly curmudgeonly yet powerful fairy--not, as one might expect, a glittery fluttery fairy but one with a furry body, snail's eyes, and whiskers--who grudgingly must grant them one wish a day, all sorts of delightful disasters come to pass.

I must admit that once or twice E. Nesbit's writing got to me.  As a matter of fact, it was exactly twice, in two separate chapters, when I felt that she was beating a riff in each chapter to death and beyond.  Other than that, Five Children and It was one of the best storytelling rides I've been on in a long time.  I loved the voice of the narrator, who was addressing child readers but clearly writing for adult ones, too, counting on them to catch the sly little jabs that snaked oh so quietly out of the corner of her mouth.  And I loved the tale itself.  Treasure, wings, jewel heists, giants, battles, and a grumpy fairy who declares to all of our beloved heroes by the end of the story, "I'm getting tired of you": What's not to love?

I wish I could sit down and have a chat with you, Mr. Lewis.  I wish you could tell me about more of the stories you loved.  But there are plenty listed in that biography,  I suppose: both the ones you admired and the ones you wrote yourself.  And life is short.  It's not likely I'll get through half of the books I already want to read.  But I look forward, someday, to sitting with you in a pair of heavenly armchairs by a celestial fire, books strewn all about, raising our cups of tea to the company that includes E. Nesbit, Kenneth Graham, Louisa May Alcott, L. M. Montgomery, and--I will insist upon it--you.