Coming Clean about Pride and Prejudice and Kids Books

I love classic literature.

For that reason, and because I'll be teaching it next year, I begrudgingly picked up the 19th Century British novel Pride and Prejudice this week. I say begrudgingly because I have consistently and soundly mocked my wife and her friends for their love affair with the text (they are her friends when talking about Pride and Prejudice or shopping, our friends when doing almost anything else).

Of course they've been right all along - I've enjoyed the read thoroughly thus far. It's clever and subtle and complex and full of social commentary and downright hilarious if you're paying attention. That's why it's considered a classic, and it's why I'll embrace it and all other classics despite Mark Twain's definition of a classic text as one that everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read. Classics are rich. Classics are deep. Classics require several careful readings, and demand something of the reader. They are worth the effort. I hope I can convince my AP students of this next year.

Sometimes, though, great quality and truth can be found in the simplest of texts: children's literature. While I love a good classic, I must admit my time spent with some children's literature this summer has proven meaningful as well.

My most recent read in my travails through C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia is the book The Horse and His Boy. Without going into too much specific detail, the main character, a boy, and his traveling partners - two horses and a girl - have faced many trials on a journey. The scariest of the trials have been their repeated encounters with lions who have been chasing them. Upon reaching his ultimate destination and meeting Aslan (the Christ figure in this series), the young boy, full of self-pity, tells Aslan about the trials and how unfortunate this trip and his life in general has been. Aslan's response:

"There was only one lion. . .I was the lion. I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you amongst the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."

And all of a sudden, all of the trials the boy had faced were opened to him for what they were - instrumental in getting him onto his current journey and making him successful in that journey. They were for his ultimate good. They caused pain and hardship, and they did not make sense at the time; however, at the heart of all of them was Aslan, either causing or allowing them to happen. The boy could not know at the time where these trials would take him, nor did he need to know. Aslan knew. And that was enough.

Trials are not fun. Losing friends and family, living under constant stress or threat, battling injustice, and enduring unexpected, undeserved pain awaits all of us at some point on whatever journey we are on. They are inevitable. Mountains of theology and sermons and I'm sure even classic texts will expound with great complexity and depth on this subject.

But from the simplicity and beauty of a "children's book" I saw what I could not see in another way. Sometimes the words targeted for the hearts of children are what adults most need to hear.