As a personal project, I wanted to illustrate the story of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C. S. Lewis, as on screen it was a childhood favourite, and I always had the chronicles of Narnia in my cupboard but never actually read it (or don’t recall ever reading it, it did seem to be bigger when I was little so probably scared me). But as I had never read it, I wanted to see if there were any differences from book to the screen adaptation like there is in many book adaptations nowadays, and I planned to illustrate the original story as opposed to the imagery I already knew from the movies or the very dated BBC version.
When actually reading the book, I was surprised but not in a good way. The story is very brief in its descriptions and I was disappointed in the lack of detail that was given, because since I didn’t want to work with the imagery I already knew, I was leaning on the details to give me a better vision of the scenery or characters so that I could interpret them in my own way.
In this case, for once, I had felt the movie and even the BBC program adaptation of the story was more detailed than the book and did give better visuals.
It was, however, an easy read, so would be better suited to a younger reader, so I could possibly be overanalysing it due to my age and level of reading.
When I think about other adventure/fantasy books that I have read, I like to compare this book against J. R. R. Tolkiens Lord of the Ring series, as where C. S. Lewis has next to no detail, on the other side of the spectrum Tolkien almost goes too much into detail in his descriptions, to the point where I did get a bit bored when reading. In C. S. Lewis’s case, it was an easy read but I feel the visuals it gave were basic and it almost seemed too fast-paced in a way.
With this book, I will try to take as much from the descriptions as possible, but I will probably illustrate more from my imagination or create a mood board to help me flesh out the visuals to my ideas.
In conclusion, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is probably better suited to a younger reader, but I still feel it definitely lacks in detail and the movie, for once, was better than the book.
Melon.R 