The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Graphic Novel
Grade 3-5?Lawrie has successfully translated Lewis's introductory volume of the "Chronicles of Narnia" (HarperCollins) into a kind of elegant, Edwardian comic book. The 17 chapters of the original have been reduced to 7. Remarkably, this is a true abridgement of Lewis's writing, with his words, particularly the dialogue, faithfully preserved. Only the name of the great wolf who serves the wicked queen has been changed. Neatly framed speech balloons vie for space with hand-printed sections of descriptive paragraphs. The large, parchment-colored pages burst exuberantly with colorful drawings of the four children and the animals they meet beyond the wardrobe. Each one is framed with decorative columns, vines, borders, or flowering plants, appropriate to the adventures they enclose. Something is lost, of course, in the use of pictures on a page rather than mental pictures produced by reading the novel. But children who might never be drawn to the full-length book will certainly be attracted to this charming, action-filled version, and, as often happens, readers of the abridged story may well turn to the original to recapture their delight.?Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.