'Dressed animals' stories are less useful translated onto stage or screen. Those books are great fun to read, and most of the animals are living human lives. They are children's stories, from a century ago. Viewpoints and styles have changed. 

I can't remember knowing the word 'fantasy' before I read Narnia and LOTR. Star Wars came out just a few years later, and it was definitely a fantasy,  but of a different sort. 

Most books that I have re-read, out of the mid-century English children's stories, were ones with a fantasy element, children going to another world or time, or something magical happening. In my 20s and 30s, I occasionally re-read a Narnia book, but almost thought of them as being like these!

Late century fantasy for children/young teens has devolved into two types: dark fantasy and fun fantasy (my term).  Each satisfies something in the reader, but there are certainly things in dark fantasy that I would not encourage for children!  One series I read in my 20s was Susan Cooper's 'The Dark Is Rising' books. I was concerned about the old dark spirituality elements which were appealing but dangerous. I chose not to re-read them. 

My favourite late-century writer, Diana Wynne Jones, wrote for younger and older readers, fun fantasy for younger, and a bit of darkness for teens. 

Narnia is neither. It is a mix of animal stories and medieval heroism. There are always things for the reader to learn and think over, fun and adventure for child readers plus hidden depths for us all.  I don't know how to place it in fantasy, except as itself!

Posted by: @narnian78

 The Wind in the Willows is a fine book, which is very appealing to children. However, I think that for me Narnia is more like a real place that I wish I could visit. 

It's funny you should say that because I recently read an old article by a literary critic criticizing the Narnia books and similar fantasy books for encouraging kids to prefer prepackaged fantasy stories to the unpredictable real world, and part of their argument was that none of the locations in Narnia feel "real" like the river in The Wind in the Willows.  

Whatever. I think they're both great books. (Or since Narnia is technically seven books, I guess I should say I think they're all great books.) 

@col-klink 

It doesn’t make much difference to me if someone criticizes the Narnia books for being too real for fantasy since I like them that way.  For me it works better to have talking animals act like real animals than having animals in human clothing. The locations in the Narnia books are more memorable to me since they remind me of actual places here on Earth. I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy The Wind in the Willows. I like that book, but I think Narnia works better for me. I just have different tastes than those who criticize the books. It doesn’t matter that much to me what others think of the Narnia books. Usually my reaction is that they can do something better with their time or perhaps write their own stories.

Posted by: @narnian78

It doesn’t make much difference to me if someone criticizes the Narnia books for being too real for fantasy since I like them that way.

Oh, the critic wasn't saying they were too realistic. They said they weren't real enough. (If anyone wants to read the essay, I can probably track it down on my computer's history.)

I'd like to write something about another children's fantasy series, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. It might sound like I'm bashing it but that's not what I want to do. What I want to do is...well, with luck, what I'm saying will be clear by the end of this post. 

I know a lot of people find the depiction women in The Chronicles of Narnia to be sexist while the Prydain books are trying hard to be proto-feminist, but if I were a woman, I'd feel a lot more "othered" by Prydain than by Narnia. You see I really don't feel like any of the heroines in the Narnia books are defined by being female. They're about as individual as the male leads. In the Prydain books, the heroine, Eilonwy, really is defined by being the girl character and her relationship with the main boy character, Taran, is clearly supposed to be represent the relationship between women and men in general. (The series is probably a little closer to pure allegory than Narnia.) 

I don't think that makes them bad characters or the books bad books. If an author wants to have their main male and female characters symbolize men and women in general, I guess that's OK. But I don't get why this doesn't get criticized for gender stereotyping while Narnia does.

@col-klink 

I think the way that Eilonway is portrayed in the Disney adaptation of The Black Cauldron is that she’s not your damsel in distress type. But, who says that every female character has to be a damsel in distress? 

Eilonwy was the only female in the first Prydain Book, aside from her aunt, the sorceress who imprisons Taran and Gwydion. All the other characters were male. But the same was true in The Mabinogion which it is based on.

And in Narnia, though the main female characters weren't defined by being female, as Col Klink says, and were in fact stronger characters than the male ones, most of the secondary or background characters were male. Aside from Hwin, there were no female Talking Beasts, Dwarves, etc. There were naiads and dryads, but they didn't push the plot like Reepicheep, Jewel, and Puddleglum did.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

I think the way that Eilonway is portrayed in the Disney adaptation of The Black Cauldron is that she’s not your damsel in distress type. But, who says that every female character has to be a damsel in distress? 

I didn't say she was the damsel in distress, nor did I say she should be. If you want to understand what I'm trying to say here's a quote from the end of the last book, but don't read it if you're worried about spoilers. 

I don't feel like any of the leading ladies in the Narnia books, like Lucy, Susan, Jill, etc, are supposed to represent all the women in the world that way. Or that the leading men are supposed to represent all men. A number of critics disagree so I thought it was worthwhile sharing my opposing opinion.

Even Lord of the Rings had mostly male characters. King Theoden wouldn’t allow Eowyn to join in battle, so she disguised herself as a man. However, she plays a key role where she and Merry kill the Witch-king of Angmar.

@jasmine_tarkheena BTW, I'm sure you've heard this already but the book, The Black Cauldron, is way better than the movie. I mean the movie's not even good. I wouldn't assume too much about one based on the other.

@col-klink 

That's usually the case. The Black Cauldron isn't necessarily the best Disney movie, especially when compared to The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.

I think that The Chronicles of Prydain has similar elements to Lord of the Rings, though much light hearted.

When it comes to comparing Narnia to other fantasies, I think that The Last Battle and Return of the King (given that they are each the last book in the series of The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings) both deal with multiple endings. The Peter Jackson movie adaption of Return of the King struggled with multiple endings and got a lot of criticism for it. I could almost see a movie adaption of The Last Battle struggling with the same thing.

I remember watching the 1977 animated adaption of The Hobbit by Rankin Bass when I was kid. It's pretty decent, and kept me entertained as a kid. Then of course, the book will always be better.

@jasmine_tarkheena 

I liked the old fashioned animation in the 1977 film of The Hobbit , which I remember was shown on television in that long ago time. Rankin/Bass also made an animated version of The Return of the King in the 1980’s, which I thought was much better than an earlier animated production of The Lord of the Rings, made by other artists.  The older movies show their age and small budget, but I think they are quite good for children even though the stories are shortened considerably. They shouldn’t be compared to Peter Jackson’s films since at the time that they were made a large budget and modern technology were not available. 

Personally I like Disney's The Black Cauldron rather a lot, despite its flaws. 😛 I haven't read the original book series, though, but would like to.

Going to be honest that I don't quite understand the question of this thread! but here's some waffle anyway: It's so hard to compare fantasy books when they can vary so much from the 'high' to the 'low' fantasy. When Harry Potter first got big, people were often quick to compare it to LOTR (okay, understandable when the films were kind of competing for a few years), but they are just so different. Yes – you can find certain themes that are the same, yet the writing style, difference of fantasy level, and so on, are quite different. And in turn, the Narnia Chronicles are a rather different tone, being more child-friendly than LOTR, but more other-wordly than HP. 

I tend to prefer the Narnia Chronicles to Tolkien's stories. I appreciate the great depths Tolkien went to with his Middle-Earth tales! But all-in-all Narnia has more nostalgia for me, and the fantasy level and writing are just a little easier going for me. Not to say I don't go in for larger books – I liked reading A Song Of Ice and Fire books, and quite a few others. I often think of that series as a historical kind of novel than strongly fantasy in a way... back to levels of fantasy... and I told you I would end up waffling here!

@sir-cabbage 

The Black Cauldron is not a perfect movie. The animation almost feels like something in a Don Bluth movie. If there is to be a Chronicles of Prydain film franchise at some point, I think that will be something.

Though I think fantasy has kind of fallen out of favor. It was a big thing with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Now I wonder if people even like fantasy nowadays.