Book Review: Advent in Narnia

Welcome to December! The focus of the blog will be a bit different this month. I’m going to highlight how various families keep Christ the center of Christmas this month. You’ll love some of these great ideas, especially if you’re a parent of “littles” looking to start new traditions.

Today, we’ll start our Advent season with a book review on Advent in Narnia: Reflections for the Season by Heidi Haverkamp. This 96 page book serves as a reader’s companion to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It consists of four weeks of reflections, each week with 7 days. It even tells you which chapter to read along with in Lewis’ book.

I was searching for a great Christmas book to share with you and stumbled on this one. On the whole, I am a huge fan. It would work great as a family guide. I can see families sitting around the Christmas tree, reading part of Narnia and part of the Reflections every evening.

I did, however, have a list of dislikes. The biggest is that it is riddled with spoilers. It not only tells what happens in other books in the Chronicles of Narnia series, it gets ahead of itself in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe reading.

To the best of my Google-research knowledge, the author, Heidi Haverkamp, is the Rector & Priest in an Episcopal Church in Illinois. I bring this up because she uses a quote from Baruch 5:1-2 and places emphasis on Mary that, “Medieval Christians saw Adam and Eve and Jesus and Mary as matched pairs. Adam and Eve brought death to humanity; Jesus and Mary brought life.”

Though these are very minor differences to my more Protestant leanings, they are matters that may create questions in your household that you should be prepared to answer such as, “Why don’t we have the apocrypha in our Bible?”

I was also tremendously confused when the Reflections ended with chapter 11 in Narnia, even though that is only halfway through the book. I had forgotten that the Reflections are Advent-based. In other words, just as the creatures in Narnia await the appearance of Aslan, so also we are to await the appearance of the Messiah, Jesus. Aslan arrives in chapter 11 so you are left finishing Narnia without further reflections. Maybe Heidi Haverkamp can create a Reflection book for Easter so that we can read all of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Reflections.

My favorite two comparisons that Haverkamp brings up in her Reflections compare Peter to Judas and Father Christmas to John the Baptist. They are as follows:

“Like Judas at the Last Supper, [Peter] slips out, unable to share in the hospitality and Communion, betrayal on his mind. He can’t receive the Beavers’ welcome or the good news of Aslan’s coming.”

“Father Christmas is less like Santa Claus than John the Baptist, sharing the news that a new time has come in which to get ready because the rightful king is on his way.”

If you are looking for a creative way to emphasize the anticipation of Jesus’ arrival, I strongly recommend this book. Once you read it, you’ll never see Narnia in the same light!