212 - Narnia, Harry Potter, and the Wingfeather Saga
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Show Notes:
There will never be adequate words to describe what these book series have meant to me over the last year. They have been some of the best parts of my life. I kid you not, over the last 12 months, I sobbed at the end of each one. Not an exaggeration. And if I'm honest, today's podcast episode almost didn't happen because I already know it's gonna fall short of what I want to say about each of these series, but I decided to move forward with it because if it encourages you to read them with a kingdom mindset, I believe it will have been worth it. Let's dive into the three best children’s series of all time.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
Okay, before I dive in to what feels like a very heavy and important podcast episode to me, because y'all, I love these books so much, I just have to give a Nancy Ray Book Club update.
So I have had the Nancy Ray Book Club for years and years where you can join my book club for free. It's very low pressure. You can basically just pick and choose which books you want to read along with me for the year. And I usually release one podcast episode a month about the book that I'm reading. Well, I just have to stop and say that this podcast episode today, the three different series that we're gonna talk about, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and the Wingfeather Saga, these three series have kind of derailed the normal book club over the last year.
And I'm not mad about it. In fact, this is probably the best decision I could have made with my time in reading. It has been, it's been so good for me. So I'll share more about that in a minute. But I just wanna let you know I'm sorry that I laid out all these books and thought that I would be able to stay on my book club plan.
But these wonderful series have totally derailed me and I hope that you hear in this podcast episode today just why I feel like it was so good and so important for this to happen. Okay, that's all. I'm hoping to get back on track with my book club the rest of the year. So nancyray.com/bookclub is where you can find out about my plan for reading.
Anyway, I just wanted to say these books just captured my heart and kind of derailed me. And that's okay because I'm really hoping that you're gonna read some of these now.
Okay. First I'm gonna share how I went about reading the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter series and The Wingfeather Saga over the last 12 months. And then I'm gonna share just the heart-wrenching, beautiful kingdom themes that have brought me to tears over and over again. I'm gonna do my best to not spoil the endings, but I make no promises because there's just gonna be some spoilers in how I'm talking about them. But I'm not gonna go into super detail and my hope is that you're gonna listen and be encouraged and read these books to yourself if you haven't read them yet.
Mostly I wanna record this episode for my kids. I hope I don't start crying when I talk about it. I'm already feeling weepy because I want them to listen to this one day and remember the time that we first read The Chronicles of Narnia together. I want them to love stories that encourage bravery in the face of danger and hope and fighting for what's right no matter the cost.
I want them to hear and know what Jesus did for them on the cross and understand it more through stories like these. And I want them to remember that we as a family, love reading together. Whew guys, how am I gonna make it through this episode? I don't know, I'm, it's just gonna do my best.
Chronicles of Narnia
So first, let's start, we're gonna rewind a year ago exactly in October, which is when we first started reading the Chronicles of Narnia as a family. This has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember having kids at the age where we could read the Chronicles of Narnia. I know these books are magical and I know the story that they tell is so much greater than four children finding a secret world and a wardrobe. It's so much bigger than that.
And I've always been so excited to read it to them and read it with them. And so we went camping in our backyard a year ago and we had a bonfire and I found the like giant copy of Chronicles of Narnia that I had. It's like all seven books in one. And we started reading it by the campfire the night that we were camping in our backyard.
Is that, can I just pause and say, that is so magical? That's like every parent's dream. It's amazing. But it took a long time to get through it. And of course we, okay, let me just say this too. We did not read them in order of like books. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. We read them in order that they, in the order that they were written. So you can look all that up online. We started with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and then we read them in the order they were written, which I highly recommend doing it in that order.
But yeah, we, we spent the next, I think we finished it in April. So October through April, every single night we read at least a chapter, maybe three or four depending on how engaged our kids were and how late it was and things like that. We would read the Chronicles of Narnia and some nights our kids were very into it. Other nights were just crazy. Other nights we had to assign them seats like in the room, you're on the floor, you're on the bed, be like, stop touching each other, stop fighting, that kind of thing. Some nights we tried to read it with Benji in the room who was like one and a half at the time and most of the time we tried to put him to bed before we read it. So just trying to paint a real picture.
But it was amazing to me how Beaufort was three when we started reading it. I think my oldest was seven. Yeah, I think the ages of my kids were 1, 3, 5, and 7 when we were reading this. And they were engaged at different levels at different times. But my three-year-old Beaufort, I can't even describe how amazing it was to see him understand. And I know not every three-year-old is engaged in reading like this. And I think you know your kid best.
But for example, I just have to record this 'cause I thought it was so special. So if you're familiar with this story, there's the most important scene with Aslan and The White Witch and the stone table and the knife and all of that. And so there's this like knife that's like described, okay. And then a few books later, okay, we're talking months later that we're reading.
That same knife is described in a, in a later book. And it was the same knife at that scene and Will just said, “Hey, does anyone remember where there is a knife?” And Beaufort piped up three years old and was like, “That was the knife at the stone table that The White Witch had.”
And Will and I looked at each other like, oh my goodness, you're right. Like buddy, good job. We are literally tearing up because that it made such an impression on him. There's so many times where Will and I just like cried, cried and cried. I mean the end of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, several chapters during that book, the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Reepicheep bravely sails to the end of the world, I mean we could not hold back the tears.
And our kids were kind of like, what? There are so many times where we kind of wanted to tell our kids who Aslan really is like, who does he represent to us? And they kept asking and Will and I actually intentionally decided to not explain it to them. We wanted them to figure it out on their own one day. And so we read through the whole series just weeping and crying. I mean when we got to the last book, we could hardly even read the end of the chapter because Will and I were like sobbing.
And Millie would ask like “But what do you, lik, why are you crying so much? And who is Aslan?” And we just decided that it would likely be more powerful for her to figure that out on her own one day when she read it again, you know, any parent can do whatever they want, but I think that realization on your own, in your own heart is so powerful. We just decided to let that be what it was and let her figure that out.
I have memories of Lyndon. We got this beautiful Chronicles of Narnia coloring book and Lyndon would just color and color and color as she listens 'cause she's one who has to kinda be doing something while she's listening. Yeah, I remember Benji just being like wild and crazy. Of course he's not getting it and I'm already looking forward to when he's like four or five and we're gonna reread the whole thing again, as a family. Yeah. So it just was really special for us.
Harry Potter
So that started in October and then it came to a wrap in April is when we finished reading that series and Harry Potter. Okay, there's so many thoughts, thoughts I have about this. It overlapped. So Will and I started reading Harry Potter in January and then we finished, I think I finished reading it in June.
So six months there. So quick backstory of Harry Potter. First of all, I'm like a little hesitant to talk about this on the podcast because I know there are so many Christians who really disagree with reading Harry Potter. And I, I understand that like I really, really do. There's a lot of warnings against sorcery and witchcraft in the Bible. That is what Harry Potter is about.
It's like witches and wizards. I also, so like I have a group of friends, family who like do not, will not participate in Harry Potter and have another group of friends family who like really, really love Harry Potter. Both groups love Jesus, love to follow Jesus. So you know, for the longest time I just was like, I'm just not gonna do it.
Mostly because I myself am very sensitive to dreams. And when if I read something or watch a movie and I'm not guarding my heart, my eyes and it's like pretty evil, I will dream about it for weeks. I kid you not. So I have never wanted to open that door because I saw a few of the Harry Potter movies a long time ago and just was like, you know what? There it's evil. Like there's some evil darkness in those movies and I'm just not gonna do it.
Well a few of Millie's little friends were reading Harry Potter around her age and I just thought, you know, I feel like as a mom, like I kind of wanna screen this book. And Will was like, I wanna screen it for her, but also I just kinda wanna read it. I've never read it. I was like, “okay, well you read it first, tell me what you think. Tell me if you think I can handle it.” And so he did and he was like, “No, they're, they're actually pretty good. Like I don't think it's for Millie yet, but you know, I, I'm enjoying it.”
And so he would read one book and then I would read one book and I was like, I think I'm just gonna stop at like book three. 'cause I heard, you know, book four gets a little crazy. So we got up to books like one, two and three and Will and I just really enjoyed them and we enjoyed talking about them. And we started to watch, like he would read a book, book one, I would read book one and then we would watch the first movie and then he would read book two, I would read book two and then we would watch the second movie and it became this thing for us. That was just something we so looked forward to. We looked forward to talking about it.
We loved the characters and we just thought, you know what, this is actually like I get the hype, like I get why this is so good. We're in our mid-thirties and we've never really understood the Harry Potter storytelling so we just decided to go for it. And then it gets up to book four and Will was like just a heads up. Like it really does get dark. Like it gets pretty dark. So you can read it if you want, but you just need to know it's a little, it's really intense. Truth. That was true.
I decided to go for it because I really loved the characters. But I will say I definitely had some dreams about it. It definitely got pretty dark at points and I'll get to this in a little bit. But I think in the end I hated the darkness so much and I hated, I just hated the evil presence and the person of Voldemort. And I hate it. Like I just, it just painted evil as evil. And in the end that's why I appreciated the books and I'll get to that in a minute. But we ended up going through all, all seven books and then all eight movies. 'cause the last book is broken into two movies and we ended up going to Harry Potter World after that. Okay. We, yes, I am admitting that like we went all in and, but I'll say like it just was something for Will and I like that we just enjoyed, like, it was just a fun story and a fun thing for us to really experience.
And I had been to Harry Potter World before in Universal Studios, but I didn't understand like anything that I saw and this time I understood everything, which made it about 20 times more fun. So that was really, that was really fun. Yeah, I feel like it's only okay if you have a certain level of spiritual maturity and parental guidance with these books.
That's kind of where we've landed and I feel like our kids need to be way more spiritually mature before we want to let them read it. So again, like it's just, it's your, it's your call as a parent and it's your call and your conviction as a believer. So there's no judgment here either way, but that's just kind of what, that's just our story from this year.
The Wing Feather Saga
Okay. And then after Harry Potter, I had been given the series The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. This is not nearly as well known as Narnia or Harry Potter, but it's a newer series and Andrew Peterson wrote it. He is more known for his music, but he's also an incredible artist and author and several friends and family were like, “You have to read Wingfeather Saga so good and you have to read it.”
So I'd asked for it for my birthday. So it was gifted it in December, but then we started reading Harry Potter in January and I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna wait on Wingfeather and I'll read those this summer. So we read Narnia and then overlapped that with Harry Potter and then both of those were done. I cried my eyes out and I was like, I just want another story.
And I picked up Wingfeather Saga and it was, it was so good. It started out kind of slow in book one, but by book two and three and four it just flew by. I mean, and again, the characters, the story, it was amazing. Could not put it down.
So after reading these series, I wanted to just make a podcast episode explaining why I loved them so much and explaining some of the kingdom themes in these books and some of the similarities between the books. That that is why I'm calling them the three greatest children's series of all time. Now I, I will admit I have not read a ton of children's series.
Okay, this is pretty much it, but I feel like I don't know that it can get any better than this. These were that good. So here's, here's some of the commonalities and common themes that I saw that I loved and appreciated about these, these different series. Okay.
First, they were all based in other worlds. They all had some sort of other world that they were part of. Now Narnia was really cool because you had like this world and then they like entered a portal into a totally different world. Harry Potter's kind of similar where like they're still living in this world, but there's this like secret underworld of like the Wizarding community. And then Wingfeather Saga is interesting because the whole thing took place in like a totally different world and land. There wasn't like a connection to the world that we're in. It just was all based there. But all of them were based in like other worlds or realities.
They all had characters that you grew to love and really identify with in different ways. And going back to what I was talking about with Harry Potter being so dark, they all painted evil as evil. They all painted and not just painted it. And they, they talked about darkness and evil as horrific. And I think about the three evil characters in each of these and how much I loathed them and how much damage they did. I think about the White Witch. I think about Voldemort, I think about Nag the Nameless, I and I just like really hate them.
And here's the crazy thing, I don't think there's a ton of like really good versus evil stories today. I think that in our culture, evil and darkness is really downplayed. And what's elevated is this like just making everybody feel good. And I think that's why I love these stories so much is because they, they painted wickedness, they, they painted a picture of wickedness for what it truly, truly is. And then they contrasted that with goodness with it. It was like light versus dark and it was beautiful. I love the common themes of bravery in each series of adventure, of imagination, of overcoming fear in the name of what is right and good.
I think it's so interesting too, every single one of them had like a remnant left. And doesn't this echo the story of God? Like I mean it, it talks about in the Bible how there's gonna be a remnant. There's gonna be a very small group of believers left fighting for righteousness in the gospel and what's right. And that, I mean, that's true in each of these stories. There's just not a lot of, yeah, there's like a remnant. There's not a lot of people left fighting for what's right and good.
And several times I think especially in Harry Potter and Wingfeather Saga, you're like, sure they're just gonna be crushed. You're sure they're gonna be be annihilated. You're sure their power is not enough that like what they're fighting for is not gonna be enough because they're just so outnumbered. And yet in the end, good wins. And I love that. I love that, I have chills talking about it. I think also of course this is like the biggest and greatest thing about each of them, but each story had someone willingly give up their life to save everyone else. And I think it's such a beautiful example of what it means to be a propitiation or like a sacrifice or like standing in the place of to buy life or purchase freedom for other people.
And when you connect that to the gospel, I feel like it just unlocks this like understanding of what Jesus did all over again. And I love, I love that, I love that so much. And so, and then in every story there's a promise of new life after that death. And so it's just a, it's just amazing I think to think through every single one of these series and how beautiful they were and how meaningful they were to me and how a story can just so capture your heart.
I'll never forget, after I finished all three of them, I was in church and I was worshiping and I was worshiping Jesus and we were singing about the cross and I just like slowly just thought about every single one of the sacrifices in each of these series. And I could not stop crying because I think it just points to such a greater story. I mean it just, they all point to the greatest story.
So I understand this was probably a very simplistic overview of three of the greatest children's book series of all time. But my hope is that if you choose to read them, that you'll be so blessed that they'll bring so much enjoyment to your life that you'll look forward to going to bed every night so that you can read more of these stories and that ultimately it will point you to the greatest story that was ever told.
Thank you for listening to work and play with Nancy Ray episode 212. You can find all of the links to all of these wonderful books in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/212. And you can always find me over at nancyray.com and @nancyray on Instagram.
C.S. Lewis said,
“No book is really worth reading at the age of 10, which is not equally and often far more worth reading at the age of 50. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
