December Studies: JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis
Two men who have undoubtedly left a lasting legacy are JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.
During December, the children and I put aside some of our regular studies to look at their lives and some of their work.
We read ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and used this free resource to review each chapter.
https://www.cslewis.org/resources/studyguides/conedrwt.pdf
We also read Tolkien’s ‘Letters from Father Christmas,’ which was a lot of fun to read together. We especially enjoyed the original artwork Tolkien produced for his children.
These two men not only produced their greatest works around the same time in history, but they were also very good friends. The book ‘The Mythmakers’ by John Hendrix is a graphic biography of these two authors and their friendship with one another.
The illustrations are excellent and the content insightful. Through reading it we learnt many interesting facts about both men’s lives. It also gently touched on deeper concepts that Tolkien and Lewis grappled with, and includes portals to the back of the book with engaging information about myths and fairy tales. It was a great way to help children think more deeply about the purpose of different types of literature.
It is well worth a read, especially for slightly older children, i.e. approaching or in secondary school.
We came across the author Hendrix last academic year, when we studied the World Wars. He wrote a similar style biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer which is also a great book.
Another discovery we made was that Tolkien and Lewis used the same illustrator for The Chronicles of Narnia and some of The Lord of the Rings illustrations – Pauline Baynes. The children and I spent some time looking at her artwork and learnt about how she came to be their illustrator. We read the picture biography ‘Painting Wonder’ by Katie Wray Schon. It was especially interesting to see how she developed her intricate map drawing skills – during a break from art school, helping to produce maps and marine charts for the Royal Navy in World War II.
We didn’t quite get round to it in December, but next on our list of read-alouds is this book, about an imaginary friendship set in CS Lewis’ childhood.
As always, to those who live locally, let me know if you’d like to borrow any of these books. Until next time, keep shining!