I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia when I was six years old halfway through my first year of school. I had discovered the joys of our school library and I still remember the day and the exact shelf where I found The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It was the lowest shelf, the one that rested on the ground and I had to crouch down to wiggle the book out from amongst its peers. By the time I'd finished first grade I'd read them all and searched high and low for any book series that could be as wonderful and magical as this one had been.

Now I could dismiss my love of these books as some quaint, childhood memory that I was unwilling to let go of. Certainly that is a factor. However, the magic has never faded. I've read them all so many times that I've memorized them. I've memorized them so thoroughly that I've told them as bed time stories to children that I've done baby sitting for. Children who have loved the stories and begged to go to bed early so that they could hear MORE about Diggory and Polly or Lucy, Peter, Edmund and Susan or more about Shasta and Avaris and so on and so forth.

It's not just children, either. My husband and I read a book, a proper book for half an hour for our son every night. For the past month that has been The Chronicles of Narnia. It's gotten to the point where he doesn't want to stop. Our son's bedtime comes and goes and my husband insists on reading just a little bit more. He says things like, "I wish I'd read these as a child! They're fantastic!"

Are they perfect? No. The Last Battle is a hard and frustrating read. The Magician's Nephew is a little awkward. The Horse and His Boy is just a TAD controversial for some of its content. But they're so, so worth the read.

To me, there's a magic to these books that time and life has never managed to dim.