Narnia Book Covers: New vs. Old | Talking Beasts
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/IvnNk65cXPY
On April 15, for the first time in 17 years, new Chronicles of Narnia cover art will be hitting bookshelves. In this episode, the podcasters zoom in and squint at every detail of the new artwork and discuss how it compares to the previous set released in 2007.
Thanks to everyone in the NarniaWeb Discord group for aiding this analysis!
This episode is a bit of a sequel to previous video series, Marsh-wiggle Madness, in which we looked at every Narnia cover ever made and crowned a champion:
Watch the post-show chatter in which Glumpuddle and Gymfan discuss more past Narnia covers and react to the Oscars.
Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Thanks for the fun discussion. For the first cover, I appreciate the placement of Aslan, which for me speaks volumes.
I struggle with these new covers, and I don’t exactly know why.
At first, I thought they were too busy, but you could probably make that same argument about some of the full-color, collector’s edition Pauline Baynes covers, which are the ones I grew up with and will always be my all-time favorites.
I think I’m pretty turned off by the fact that so many of these covers depict scenes and things that are not book-accurate, from Lucy and Susan fighting the White Witch to Shasta holding the reins to whatever weirdness that is on the Magician’s Nephew cover. (Side note: that cover’s vibes, at least to me, feed into Glumpuddle’s whole idea that MN is the most sci-fi of the Chronicles!) But then, there are book inaccuracies in Baynes’ illustrations too — I know many people get hung up on her depictions of Lucy with dark hair. (As a brunette myself, I always rather liked that little change, but I digress.)
And then I thought, well, I don’t love that literally every cover in this new set has chosen a big action/battle scene to make this look as EPIC as possible, when that’s not all Narnia is about. And then I remembered that the Last Battle cover in the Baynes full-color editions literally has people getting stabbed.
Basically, all the concrete arguments I’ve been coming up with for why I don’t like the new covers have had holes in them … but I still just don’t like them! Maybe it’s just me being a stick-in-the-mud and clinging to my old versions. I have been known to be quite resistant to change. 🙂
In the end, I hope they continue to attract new readers to Narnia, and I hope there are folks out there that fall in love with them just as much as I fell in love with my Narnia books!