I think Laura Miller lets C.S. Lewis off the "smug proselytizing" hook too easily. The Narnia books are full of regretful but stiff warnings as to the consequences of failing to open one's heart and soul to Aslan. You'll be consigned to a hell of your own making, and there's simply nothing the omnipotent and all-merciful Aslan can do about it. Aslan also has some choice words for a child who rails against the death of his mother: that if she lived, the son would one day wish that she had died. So there! You'd better shut up and accept your fate, or else something even worse will happen to you! This is the kind of theology that makes people hate God. Philip Pullman writes that human history has been a battle between those who want us to be free and those who want us to be humble and obey and submit. It is sadly clear which camp Lewis is in.

-- Savannah Jahrling

While many of Laura Miller's points about L. Frank Baum and C.S. Lewis are well taken, there are others I would disagree with strongly. I loved Lewis as a child and never had much interest in Baum, but in the course of reading large chunks of both authors to my own children, I developed a profound admiration for Baum and a distinct exasperation with Lewis.

Baum is the best read-aloud writer I have ever encountered, because of the absolute precision and clarity of his style. When reading Baum, I never had to restart a sentence because I had guessed wrong about the syntax or the tone of voice or the character who was saying it. My children and I never had to break off the story for long discussions of whether a sentence meant what it seemed to mean or exactly what was supposed to be happening. This sort of deliberate simplicity is not easy to achieve -- it takes skill of a high order.

In contrast, I had great problems reading Lewis aloud. His style, although evocative, is frequently foggy, and he is particularly bad at action scenes. There is a climactic fight near the end of Prince Caspian that is described in just a single paragraph, starting with, "The next minute or so was very confused," and ending with, "it was all swords, teeth, claws, fists and boots for about sixty seconds" -- after which the good guys pick themselves up and find that the bad guys are all dead. That seemed like a cheat to me when I was 9, and it still seems like a cheat to me today.

I also had difficulties with Lewis' attitudes when I read him aloud. It may be p.c. of me, but I enjoyed voicing Baum's expressions of tolerance, embrace of diversity and freedom from anthropocentrism, while I found it actively painful to give voice to Lewis' narrow-minded prejudices, elitism and distaste for anything that was alien to him. I got very tired of saying the words "nasty" and "horrid" with just the right degree of contempt and revulsion. I felt embarrassed trying to explain to my children why in the Narnia books nonsmoking vegetarians who send their children to progressive schools are automatically considered Bad People. I had to break off the story over and over again to explain or apologize for Lewis' unstated assumptions.

It's true that British fantasy has a depth and seriousness that American fantasy lacks. It's no coincidence that the three best contemporary fantasy writers -- Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne Jones -- are all British. I would like to see American fantasy grow up. But badmouthing Baum and setting up Lewis as a model are not the way to accomplish that.

-- Cory Panshin

It was with a mixture of excitement and anxiety that I began to read Laura Miller's essay comparing Narnia and Oz. Such a mixture may be entirely expected, given her subject matter (fairy tales), but my anxiety stemmed from something a little more this-worldly: How could a Salon writer write three pages on C.S. Lewis without the obligatory insult to Christianity?

I hoped she might make it through, of course, and was just beginning to believe that she would when I came across this statement:

"The well-earned reputation that Christians have for smug proselytizing ..."

And so there it was: the talismanic affront, guaranteed to ward off any left-leaning, academic glowering over her otherwise favorable article on the Christian Lewis. The left used to call this technique "speaking in code," at least when it was employed by the right. Translated, I take her "code" to mean: "Yes, yes, this Lewis fellow has produced some brilliant writing. But don't worry, I'm praising him as a sophisticated Brit, not as a Christian, for goodness' sake!"

It's instructive to imagine the other forms Miller's slur might have taken, and the reaction these forms might engender. What if she had casually referred to "the well-earned reputation Jews have for greed" or "the well-earned reputation Muslims have for blowing up ships and airplanes"?

Such statements would be seen for what they are: transparent bigotry. And they would be no different from the strangely more tolerable bigotry embedded in Miller's statement about Christians.

-- Andrew G. Smith

Laura Miller's article raises some important points. I quite agree with her assessment of the foolish attempts of misguided moralizers to protect children from knowledge of evil, harm and death for as long as possible. Indeed, attempting to do so is the worst possible method to prepare children for the richness and the difficulties of living in an ambiguous world where moral choices permeate our everyday existence. If we claim to respect our children, then the least we can do is give them the information and the tools they need to negotiate existence as a human on this planet. If we fail to respect our children, waffling and mumbling vague, placating answers when they ask us difficult questions, such as "Why did Gramma die?" or "What's the Holocaust?" we are robbing them of their integrity. We are robbing them of the ability to know truth from falsehood.

I'd like to thank Miller for her honesty and for (perhaps) providing an opportunity for a discussion about Americans' collective relationship with our children.

-- Solvei Blue

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"