Something Rotten in Narnia?

Just hours after The New York Times hit doorsteps on the first Sunday of this month, my e-mailbox began to fill with distraught messages. "Sit down before you read this, in case you start crying," wrote one friend, and another muttered, "Poor Lewis must be turning over in his grave." One message was headed, "Lord have mercy on Narnia."

The source of their distress was a Times article that reported, working from a leaked memo, that HarperCollins was planning to perform a marketing makeover on "The Chronicles of Narnia," a series of children's novels penned by British author C.S. Lewis in the mid-20th century. Since the debut of the first volume, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," the series has enjoyed roaring success, to the tune of 65 million copies in 30 languages. The news story indicated that HarperCollins hoped to boost this success even further by separating Narnia from its religious roots.

The news hit Narnia fans as sacrilege. Lewis, a traditional Anglican, embraced classic Christianity, and the denizens of Narnia sometimes enact elements of the Christian story. The allegory is handled with subtlety. Young readers often miss Aslan the lion's resemblance to Christ, for instance, or the apocalyptic echoes of "The Last Battle." Much of the action is simply good storytelling and doesn't carry allegorical weight. The books' faith background, however, is integral.

Much of the uproar was due to a misunderstanding; readers thought that the plan was to de-Christianize the stories. The misunderstanding was reasonable, since the article was confusingly headlined "Marketing 'Narnia' Without a Christian Lion." The publisher has continued to repeat a terse statement that "The works of C.S. Lewis will continue to be published ... as written by the author, with no alteration," but the alarming first impression has stuck. Some Narnia fans acknowledge the publisher's statement but say they simply don't trust them and don't think they will keep their word.

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