I don’t have a problem with teaching kids to be kind, loyal, just, and merciful. I don’t even have a problem with teaching kids values directly using the Bible or the Quran or the Torah or whatever as long as it isn’t at a public school.

What I do have a problem with is forcing kids to read a poorly written book. That’s the kind of thing that risks turning a potential lifelong reader into someone who hates books.

I’d have been willing to overlook being bashed over the head with the symbolism of the reincarnation of Aslan, the stone table, the Garden-of-Eden-style temptation of the Turkish Delight, the Cain and Abel plotline being rammed down our throats with Edmund, etc all of which I immediately identified when reading the book as a second grader who grew up Catholic.

But at a minimum, there had to be some passably well-written complex characters I could care about and some dialogue that resembled a real conversation. And there wasn’t. Instead, we were left with pitiful caricatures of kids just barely sufficient to construct a web of thinly veiled symbolism on top of.

And parents then foist that pitiful excuse for storytelling on children with the non-logic that if it’s so heavily inspired by Christianity, it must be good.