Because I loved their production of The Magician’s Nephew last year, I went to see the Shaw Festival’s 2019 production of that other seldom-adapted Narnia story, The Horse and His Boy. This adaptation took a few more liberties with the original, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (particularly since the…
Last week, when I was sharing some thoughts about Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, I mentioned that including diversity of sexual orientations in a story doesn’t necessarily mean including sexual acts. I’d like to expand on that. The place and profession where I’m most cognizant of…
(WARNING: Spoilers for Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the original Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation movies, and various Sherlock Holmes stories and adaptations.) I w a r n e d y o u t h…
Among the many things that bother contemporary readers in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is his treatment of Susan, the eldest sister and second-oldest sibling of the four Pevensie children who defeat the White Witch to become the rules of of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In The…
This High Holiday season, I thought about a joke.* Three rabbinical students are praying on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The first student, a pious individual who has spent years and years studying Torah and Talmud and who spends all his spare time going over learned commentary, is moved…
One of the reasons C. S. Lewis is such a delightful writer is that he’s good at making insightful studies of a topic often treated with saccharinity or cynicism: how people think and behave when they’re trying to be good. He paints excellent portraits of intelligent minds trying to come…
So, last Saturday, I had a bunch of people over to make gingerbread houses. After the decorating and the gorging (one for me, one for the house – on a totally unrelated note, in case you were wondering, eating nothing but candy, cookies, and icing for two days straight is…
Anyone who comments with “that’s what she said” gets a kick in the pants. So, Narnia. The series that started it all for me. I really didn’t want to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; at Brownies, another girl who was trying to bluff her way through her…
When the season finale of House (or Dexter, or The X Files, or whatever single TV show I’m into) airs, I promise myself: next season, I will not fall for the same old trap. I will not seek out spoilers from Wikipedia or fanboards. I will not skim through fanfiction.net…
But first… happy Father’s Day, Dad! Well, if J. K. Rowling’s not done with Harry Potter, then neither am I. (Stop that groaning!) So I mentioned in passing in my review of Prince Caspian that, despite appearing more liberal and progressive, the Harry Potter series gives me the ICKY!s much…