Literary Criticism Chart

The first mega-budget installment in The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, won't hit theaters in the U.S. until Dec. 9, but a wave of guides to C.S. Lewis's books hit the Literary Criticism chart this week. Debuting in the Top Five is Finding God in the Land of Narnia, by Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware. (Lewis [1898?1963] fashioned his Narnia chronicles as Christian allegories, integrating his own spiritual beliefs into the stories.) Farther down the chart, at No. 9, is The Companion to Narnia, Revised and Expanded, by Paul F. Ford; and Richard J. Wagner's C.S. Lewis & Narnia For Dummies, at No. 14. The upcoming Disney adaptation won't be the first for the popular series. Three books were adapted into a live-action TV series on the BBC in 1989 (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair). An animated version of Wardrobe was made into a TV movie in 1979, from Children's Television Workshop.

1. THE PLOT THICKENS, Galadriel Waters-Editor (Wizarding World Press, Paperback, 0972393633)
2. THE SCIENCE OF HARRY POTTER, Roger Highfield (Penguin Group, Paperback, 0142003557)
3. HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR, Thomas C. Foster (Perennial, Paperback, 006000942X)
4. THE ULTIMATE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE, Douglas Adams (Value Proprietary, Hardcover, 0517124858)
5. FINDING GOD IN THE LAND OF NARNIA, Kurt Bruner & Jim Ware (Tyndale House Publishers, Hardcover, 084238104X)