Lee Duigon

I am convinced there is a book missing from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series–a book that should have been written, but wasn’t. And I sort of believe that Lewis knew what that book was and would have gotten around to writing it someday, if only he’d lived longer.

My wife and my editor say I should get permission from Lewis’ estate and write the book myself. Well, I dunno… The Narnia books are, I should say, inimitable. There are writers who are as good as C.S. Lewis was, but I’ve never seen anyone who could do certain things as well as Lewis did them.  No one, for instance, but no one, was better than C.S. Lewis at giving you a whole character in just a few sentences, when anyone else would have needed a whole page. And who else would ever think of, and dare to do it, putting Father Christmas into the middle of a Narnia story?

Meanwhile, let me check my instincts against yours, dear readers. What do you think the unwritten Narnia book would be about?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth fantasies, only two of which were published during his lifetime (The Hobbit and the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings) were the product of long decades of focused imagination. He worked on them for most of his long life.

In the process of shaping his imaginary world, he created languages. The most fully-realized of these was Quenya, more popularly known as “Elvish.”  Remember, Tolkien was a scholar who had a gift for difficult foreign languages. While still in his teens, he taught himself to speak Welsh and Finnish. (Go ahead, try it yourself!) So, as created languages go, Tolkien’s Elvish is pretty much top-of-the-line.

A friend recently sent me this recording–made some years before Lord of the Rings was published–of Tolkien reciting his poem, “Namarie,” in Elvish. Listen:

http://io9.com/5941544/listen-to-jrr-tolkien-read-his-poem-namarie-in-elvish

One commenter sees in this nothing but “an elderly gentleman reciting gibberish.” Personally, I find it fascinating and compelling–offering the very faintest hope that maybe, just a little-bit maybe, Middle Earth might be real, after all. More than that, I find it soothing.

No one understood better than Tolkien the use of fantasy as escape. And there’s plenty we want to escape from! I mean, you could lose your mind trying to make sense of American foreign policy these days. To watch our nation governed by wicked fools is something we might well want to break away from, now and then.

As a Christian, Tolkien was instrumental in converting C.S. Lewis out of atheism. So I am sure he never intended “escape” to be a substitute for prayer, for Bible-reading, for communing with the living God who can, and often does, take us under the shelter of His wings. There is no substitute for that.

But we fantasy writers who consciously try to serve God, who try in our own small way and in our own peculiar field to advance the Kingdom of Christ… well, we appreciate a little Elvish now and then.

Would you like to read something that’s clean and wholesome and playful enough for children, but also witty, subtle, and clever enough for any adult who doesn’t take himself too seriously?

I had to go back to my childhood for these treasures–the various adventures of Freddy the Pig, by Walter R. Brooks (d. 1958). Brooks created Mr. Ed, the talking horse, but the Freddy books were his magnum opus. I loved them when I was in grammar school. I love them even more now.

Freddy is a talking pig who is a poet, a detective, banker, newspaper editor, polar explorer, magician, and several other things. He lives on the Bean farm near the Adirondacks with many other talking animals. The farmer, Mr. Bean, has never been quite comfortable with this.

If you’ve ever wondered how a spider might deliver a lecture, how a cow might cope with a swing, or how a pig might fare at flipping flapjacks, these books are for you. You might wish to start with the first of the series, Freddy Goes to Florida, and read them in order. Or simply grab the first one you can get and just dive in.

Among my favorites are Freddy Goes Camping, Freddy Plays Football, and Freddy and the Ignormus. There are dozens of these, and to this day I haven’t read them all–which gives me something exquisitely pleasant to look forward to.  All are illustrated by the great Kurt Wiese.

If you’re a sophomoric sap committed to a vision of radical despair, maybe the Freddy books can’t do much for you. You won’t be interested in Mr. Webb the spider’s movie career, or Uncle Solomon the screech owl’s penetrating criticisms of Freddy’s poetry. But if your breath can still fog a mirror, I suspect these books will do you good.

I’m not sure I can get away with classifying these as fantasy. Then again, I don’t know what else you’d call them… other than a gift from God.