Fireberry wrote:One revision I'd like to see might be (in LWW?), some mention of how Narnia's great "Tree of Protection" came to its end.
I like that idea, but only if it was subtle in its mention. Otherwise it would definitely be a spoiler for Magician's Nephew. Of course that's probably your point, making all the books read well chronologically. I wonder if Lewis himself would have preferred the chronological or publication order and changed his work accordingly?
Rose-Tree Dryad, if you ever read PC in that order, let us know how it flows. I'm afraid alternating chapters would be jarring because different Trumpkins would be in both timelines, but maybe it would work.
King_Erlian wrote:For one thing, the Beavers come across as too human. In the other books the Talking Beasts are more like their dumb counterparts in certain ways, such as how they eat, sleep etc. Bree and Hwin, for instance, don't live in houses, wear clothes or eat their food cooked and off plates.
I can see how people are going to find different things they want to change from the books. I find that scene charming myself. Beavers are second only to humans for altering their environment by building dams. It makes sense they'd be more industrious and have more tools (and I don't think they're mentioned wearing clothes unless I'm forgetting something.) Also Reepicheep always had a sword and circuit on his head. Meanwhile, Hwin and Bree were raised just like dumb horses, so I'm not sure how good of an example they are.
On the same note, I think mentioning Archenland and Calormen in LWW would explain a lot. I'm assuming the Narnians got all their food from those countries since they couldn't grow crops. Having other countries with human occupants confuses the White Witch's reaction to the children through. If there were humans just one country over, she shouldn't be so surprised to see them. Maybe Lewis planned to revise that somehow, perhaps by making the prophesy be specifically about children from another world.
I would also remove the "talking down to children" that is present in LWW and not in any of the other books, such as "if I did [describe the Witch's followers], the grown-ups might not let you read this book". That made me squirm when I first read LWW when I was about 6 or 7.
Huh, I had a different take-away from that line. I always assumed Lewis included it because he knew his reader's imaginations would fill in what they feared or loathed most. The shark wasn't shown much in "Jaws" because it was corny looking, but that made the movie much scarier than it would have been if the shark was in every shot.
I find a brief line in "The Last Battle" really interesting. After Jewel has been rescued and Poggin joins the group, Jewel tells his story in one paragraph. The last sentence reads "He didn't know what had happened to the Lamb." As far as we the readers know, nothing at all HAS happened to the lamb. The Ape yells at him and then he isn't mentioned again until Jewel's cryptic line. I have to wonder if that's an editing error and Lewis first wrote that the Lamb was also imprisoned. Perhaps the scene was cut for some reason after that and Lewis missed this little line. It's probably small errors like this that Lewis would have polished up.