Terrifying Bedtime Story!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've likely seen ads or trailers for Disney's upcoming movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It looks like it's going to be great, and the East Grand Forks Mobergs are planning to see it for several reasons:

• Susan remembers reading, as a youngster, the C.S. Lewis book upon which the movie is based (in fact, she has read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series of seven books);
• In 1996 Susan and I were in a musical called Narnia, also based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe--I played Aslan the lion, and she played the White Witch; and
• we have recently been reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with our daughters in anticipation of the movie, to which we hope to take them.

Each night we cuddle up together on the couch or on someone's bed and read another chapter of the novel. The girls know about the musical that Mommy and Daddy were in, and they have heard some of the songs from it, and they have seen ads for the upcoming movie, so they are especially interested in the book. And they're terrific listeners and imaginers--the book has very few illustrations, but they listen carefully and easily picture in their heads the characters, settings, and action. They ask the best questions after we finish each chapter, and they make excellent predictions of what will happen the next night when we read again.

(This imagining and predicting is something too many of my students--juniors and seniors in high school--are not able or willing to do when they themselves read, either having lost the ability over the years or having never developed it as early readers. As a consequence, they often label whatever they're reading "boring," unwilling to expend the mental energy that a reader must in order to interact with the book and make it interesting. Some people speculate that this is a consequence of their having grown up inundated with media that do all the interpreting for them: video games, TV shows, movies, music videos, etc., that show them without ever requiring them to picture things for themselves and that they take in passively without ever having to do much mental work to interact with them. I myself am a big fan of well done movies and TV shows and don't blame them alone for so many students' poor reading. Instead, I think it's a result of never being encouraged or required to read--of being allowed to take in only visual media and rarely or never just a good book. In any case, it's a sad situation.)

Last night, the girls and I were on a roll and read four chapters before finally calling it a night and tumbling into bed! We stopped in part because Suzanna was crying. She is so good at developing empathy for the characters in a book or movie that she gets outwardly emotional when they're in a sad or scary situation. Last night she got scared during the chapter when the four Pevensie children are at Mr. and Mrs. Beaver's house eating and talking about the White Witch's evilness and Aslan's upcoming return to Narnia. At one point, the Pevensies notice that their brother Edmund (under the witch's spell) has slipped away, presumably to report the others' whereabouts to the White Witch. I was lying on my stomach, and Suzanna was on my back, and she clutched my shirt, buried her face into my back, and started to cry. We had a group hug and talked about why she was crying: she was concerned that the White Witch was going to find and hurt the children, and she didn't want to keep reading for fear that she would have to witness that horrible act! We had a great conversation about fiction and reality and good vs. evil and God and "getting into" reading, etc. What a sweetheart! And her sisters were so sweet about comforting her, too (and perhaps a little patronizing, but not intentionally).

A few years ago, we watched the movie version of The Wild Thornberrys, a terrific kids' show on Nickelodeon. At one point the daughter Eliza is sent to boarding school and must say goodbye to her parents. She is waving to them as they part, and the background music is sad--and there sat Suzanna between her mom and me, shuddering and sobbing.

I hope she always maintains the capacity to develop a sense of empathy for the characters in the books and movies and TV shows that she enjoys. That's the way that she will be able to experience the catharsis of a good cry during an emotional book or movie, and that's a good indication that she will be an empathetic and sympathetic member of the human community to which she belongs. And we need more of those kinds of people in this world.

Everyone, keep reading!!