Large Family Idiosyncrasy #9: Restricting Books (Part One)

I think anyone who knows our family knows we love books. We use them to cover our walls, and we carry them everywhere: outside, on trips, to church, to bed...but there are times when Mom and Dad had to restrict our reading. If they had not, we would have "read our lives away", as Mom so eloquently put it.

The first "book restriction rule" that I recall was definitely provoked. You see, all of us were obsessed with The Chronicles of Narnia at the time, and we literally read the books to pieces. The Magician's Nephew was the first to fall apart, and so if I wanted to read it, I would sit on the couch, with pages spread around me, intending to put them in order, but usually getting distracted and starting to read before I was finished.

As well as reading the physical copies we owned an audio version of all seven books, and we loved listening to them as we did our chores—especially while cleaning the bathrooms, for some reason. We were not, however, allowed to listen to them at night before falling asleep, as the stories were so exciting that they kept us awake too late into the night! A rare and cherished treat was watching the BBC TV version, produced in the late eighties. Our grandparents on Mom's side had VHS tapes of Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian/Dawn Treader, and we were so enamored with the stories we didn't care that Aslan looked like a stuffed animal, and the beavers were full-sized grownups in a costume.

We not only read them over and over, listened to them, and watched them at every opportunity, we also acted them out, both in the living room and in the back yard. Andrew was Peter Pevensie, Margaret was Susan, I was Edmund, and Rebekah was Lucy. (Margaret was often Lucy as well, since Reba was really too little to play. Sometimes Rebekah was the D.L.F. [narnia points if you catch that reference].) Since we had three girls and only one boy (Maxwell being a newborn at this time), I was always the second boy character. If it was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe we were acting out, I was Edmund. If it was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I was either Edmund or Eustace, and Andrew was Caspian. I was quite a tomboy when I was little, so I did not mind in the least!

Sticks became swords, blankets became cloaks, twisted handkerchiefs became crowns. There was an old cherry tree in the middle of the yard, gnarly and dying, which in our imaginations was the terrible White Witch. We would hurl spears at it, and hack at it with our swords (which may possibly have contributed to the dying process!). Even when we were doing household chores, our minds were in Narnia. Making the bed became a death-defying fantasy adventure, and I still clearly remember dreaming about Narnia!

Unfortunately, we were occasionally required in the real world, and to pull us back from our imaginations, at some point one of our parents (identity withheld) actually had to BAN Narnia! We were not allowed to play it, or read it for a certain period of time. In my young mind, it seems like we were banned for about a year, but I'm guessing it was only a couple months one summer—or perhaps when the school year started, so we could focus. Of course, we were horrified and woebegone, and I'm afraid we only partially obeyed, viewing our normally beloved parent as a veritable King Miraz for a time, (the tyrant was not  able to control our dreams!) but eventually we learned some balance, and the restriction was gradually lifted.