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Perelandra exemplifies the delighted praise of beauty in a hymn to creation, the praise of the great cosmic dance. This hymn worships the Creator with such plenitude that sometimes reading groups have divided it among different voices and recited it in a worship service. That Hideous Strength teaches the hatred of ugliness and evil by the actions of Frost and Wither. There is an Objective Room, where everything is subtly out of shape. Frost uses it to train neophytes to abandon their natural emotions in favor of (falsely) scientific objectivity. Mark receives this training, but he escapes from it and is healed by reading a children's story.

After finishing the adult fantasies, Lewis turned to writing his best-known work, the Chronicles of Narnia. These stories take their place with The Wind in the Willows, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Little Prince as childhood classics. They are exciting and skillfully told, but also theologically profound and deeply devotional. And therein arises a problem. It is easy to think that children should immediately identify Aslan with Jesus. Instead, they need to "freely receive" this beautiful art into their souls and be nourished by it.

Now that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has been made into a movie, it is being touted as "The Passion of the Christ for Kids," and there are numerous websites explaining the cognitive doctrines of Christianity in language worthy of the grammarian Pulverulentus Siccus (Full-of-Dust Dry) in Prince Caspian. The allegorical correspondence between events in the stories and cognitive doctrines may be what the Chronicles are made of, but it is not what they are.

As Lewis explains in his essay "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said," at first he had no intention of promoting Christian ideas. He began to write The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe because he had begun to see images: "a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion." The fairy tale seemed the best literary form to handle the events that were growing from the images. Later on, he began to see how the stories could be used to get away from stained-glass boredom and cultivate Christian feelings, especially among children who were alienated from Sunday school. To teach the Chronicles as Christian doctrine is to defeat Lewis's purpose in writing. Similarly, to demand that the reader respond with the "delighted praise of beauty" is to foster the literary snobbery that Lewis hated.

Trying to enjoy the Chronicles is self-defeating, like trying to fall asleep. The only way to succeed is not to try. A child who likes fantasy (not all children do) will benefit from the Chronicles naturally. An adult who likes fantasy can get the greatest value from them by reading them to a child—without comment unless the child asks questions. Lacking a suitable child, the next-best course for the adult is to read the Chronicles on vacation.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is especially beautiful in its portrayal of the children's relationship to Aslan. Lewis provides images that feel like the Christian's exchange of love with Jesus. It is like hugging and being hugged in lush fur, like being tossed in the air and caught by velvet paws, like riding on a swift animal as big as a horse but smooth-gaited as a cat, like being called "dear heart" and "my son." Aslan breathes on the children to give them courage; he roars when the White Witch suggests that he might not keep his word, for he is fearsome as well as loving. He goes meekly to meet his death; he is mocked and tortured. Lucy and Susan weep bitterly; so do adults and sophisticated junior high students.

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