Chronicles of Narnia - POLL

it's odd given the mode of baynes's illustrations for farmer giles of ham -- which are witty and stylised and pull in the bayeux tapestry and the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts, and medieval illustration generally, and in 1948 she's drawing horses (there are plenty in and around ham) perfectly well -- that she was then bundled into an approach that worked much less well for her in the CSL books (1950-56)? like the image of the children all tumbling out of the wardrobe at the end of tLtWatW: it's inept goofiness is actually kind of engaging, but it's objectively not good realism!!

a book baynes worked on that i loooove is amabel williams-ellis's* fairytales of the british isles (1960)

meet beelzebub!
https://www.paulinebaynes.com/_gallery_images/fiomiz57w95o.jpg

*married to the architect who designed portmeirion

really good revive this! and tho mark is obv absolutely right, i totally saw where f.hazel was coming from, and I was trying to work out why.

I think in my v uncategorised childhood mind (not recognising these come from different periods and strands), Tom's Midnight Garden, The Secret Garden, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Five Children and It, The Box of Delights and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (and a number of others eg Over Sea, Under Stone) were quite similar. all involve displacement through illness, war, parental absence and the discovery of magic of some form (the form is important though: myth, ghosts, ancient immanent magic.

The city/pastoral division is probably important (puck and a midsummer night's dream is really not very far away in some of these). Purely mechanically it gives the child or children somewhere to explore and time on your hands to do it.

uhhh what has Amazon done now? All I saw was a single still of "The Pevensie Era" and I am terrified of what they may have wrought

fucking nikabrik