Narnia Bloggin': the new Chronicles of Narnia covers I've seen in person

Previously: more cover art for The Chronicles of Narnia books

I've been to my local Barnes & Noble a couple of times this year (I try to stay away because it's such a temptation), and naturally I looked at the new individual covers of The Chronicles of Narnia when I was there. I was able to look at The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW), Prince Caspian (PC), The Horse and His Boy (HHB), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (VotDT), and The Magician's Nephew (MN). Sadly my B&N didn't have The Silver Chair (SC) or The Last Battle (LB), so I was unable to see those in person. 

The new book covers (art by Owen Richardson) look basically just like what you see online. I'm glad I took pictures of the back covers, as the seller websites I looked at don't seem to post them at all. Obviously you can see the full wraparound cover images here. 

LWW back cover

 

PC back cover

 

VotDT back cover

 

HHB back cover

 

 

MN back cover

Remember the planetary symbols that Richardson sneaked into the cover illustrations? The one for LWW is covered up due to how the back of the book is formatted. PC, VotDT, and MN's planetary symbols are on the front covers, so you can still see them if you know what to look for. HHB's is on the back cover, but it escapes being covered up by the other back cover elements. I spent way too long looking for the planetary symbol in LB's cover art before looking at NarniaWeb's answer key (at the link above) and realizing that Richardson just put the literal planet Saturn. 🙄 You can read what I think about the whole Planet Narnia thing here. 

Earlier this month I went back to B&N to look at the super expensive deluxe slipcase edition of the TCON omnibus, only to find they don't carry it in-store. I did find the deluxe edition (still hardcover, no fancy slipcover) and was able to hold it in my hot little hands. I like how it looks, especially the holographic-y cover and painted edges. I didn't think to take the slipcover off (I think it does come off), so I wasn't able to look at the pretty wardrobe design under the slipcover. 

hopefully the video comes out ok. I took it to show the cover's holographic effect

 

omnibus back cover

omnibus sprayed edges

The question is: do I buy the deluxe omnibus ($60-75) since it has the sprayed edges and the pretty wardrobe cover design under the slipcover, which is what I like the most, or do I buy the deluxe slipcase edition omnibus ($150) as it has the nice red velvet slipcover with gold illustrations of Lucy & Tumnus, Aslan's head, and Digory and Polly on pegasus!Fledge, plus the aforementioned painted edges? Do I really want to pay an extra $75 or whatever for a book I'll be hesitant to touch (the spine and slipcover are in red velvet and I cannot touch velvet due to sensory ick)? It's probably not worth it to drop $150 on something I can get most of for $75. If only my Barnes & Noble carried it in person... I would dearly like to look at and touch the deluxe slipcover version. To be quite honest, I don't need another omnibus; I already have 2 paperback ones. I know that if I don't buy one of these, I'll regret it like I regret not getting the Barnes & Noble leatherbound edition omnibus... Ah well, money is made to be spent.

Anyway, you can look at all the current Narnia versions out this year for the 75th anniversary of LWW here: www.narniaweb.com/2025/10/harper-collins-completes-full-catalogue-refresh-for-narnias-75th-anniversary

To read my other Narnia Bloggin' posts, click on the Narnia label at the bottom of this blog post. 

Narnia bloggin': the different Chronicles of Narnia covers I collect

Previously: the first post in this series

I mentioned previously how I collect multiple editions of The Chronicles of Narnia that have different covers, which I brought up because of the announced upcoming new TCON covers by artist Owen Richardson that I wanted to talk about in my previous Narnia Bloggin' post. That got me thinking about all of the different cover editions of the TCON series that I own, and I decided to turn my Narnia bloggin' post into a series so I can post about all of them. Unless otherwise stated, I collected all of these by looking for them in thrift stores and yard sales and slowly buying them one by one as they turned up. I don't think I paid more than $3-5 for each copy. 

I first read The Chronicles of Narnia at my local public library, and they all mostly had these deeply strange and ugly neon illustrated covers that I nonetheless have a lot of nostalgia for. The cover for The Magician's Nephew (MN) is especially imprinted in my mind, as it was the first Narnia book I ever read. A quick google let me know that these are the 1970 Collier Books set with art by Roger Hane. I picked up from my various readings and Narnia fandom presence that these were made for the American market, although I may not be correct.

source

For the most part, these covers mostly seem to be the artist's take on scenes from the book, probably inspired by the preexisting inside illustrations by Pauline Baynes, whose illustrations remain inside of all of the different versions of the full Narnia books I've ever seen (even the mostly un-illustrated omnibus retains one of her illustrations to head each chapter). I don't remember if PB actually drew the four Pevensie children going into the wardrobe and Narnia the way Hane has for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW), and the cover illustration for MN is drawn from a description of the children and Jadis emerging from a pool in the Wood Between the Worlds (Jadis had indeed grabbed Polly by the hair). The disembodied giant head of Aslan above Shasta and Bree on the cover of The Horse and His Boy (HHB) is, of course, artistic license. Overall, good and accurate covers, if a bit strange. I own all seven.

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The first Narnia books set I ever owned was the 1990s ones with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, a married couple and fantasy & science fiction illustration powerhouses who have illustrated a lot of famous books. I believe the brass-looking wardrobe frame around each cover illustration was made by one or both of them too. I think it's supposed to depict a dryad (?) and a dwarf welcoming you into the wardrobe and Narnia. As a child I received one book for each birthday and Christmas in a four-year span; my parents undoubtedly thought seven books were too many and too expensive to bestow upon me at once. 

source

MN focuses solely on its antagonist, as does LWW; the rest depict pivotal scenes in their respective books (well, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader [VotDT] depicts the Dawn Treader just sailing on the water, a popular choice for the book). The Dillons' art is very detailed and has a bit of an alien, weird quality. The title areas all having different colors is a good idea to help tell them apart. I highly recommend clicking on the source link below the above image to see the original poster's other pictures of the covers.

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After the Disney LWW movie I got into the Narnia fandom online and became aware of other book covers. 

One of my favorites is Cliff Neilsen's TCON covers; they're computer illustrated and feel fresh and modern. I especially love the flame lion Aslan that adorns the omnibus. 

 

 

The transparent, scifi-looking elements make the books seem spookier then they (generally) are. Looking at the covers now, they do rather look like products of their times, but I do still like them a lot. The LWW cover is probably my favorite. I own all of these except for The Magician's Nephew, for some reason.

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Like most book lovers, I generally disdain movie tie-in book covers, but I did get the ones for the Disney Narnia movies. My mother actually bought me the LWW tie-in Narnia omnibus (the one with the White Witch), which a friend of hers had at her yard sale or something. I did not want to buy it myself because it only depicts art from the first book/movie (the fire Aslan omnibus pictured above is general so it was ok in my opinion). However, a gift is a gift. Owning that omnibus is what made me decide to buy the other movie tie-in covers. 

 

I genuinely cannot recall which of the two LWW movie covers is the one I have; maybe one is on the LWW omnibus? I cannot recall. I have all of these except for VotDT (I actually just purchased the movie cover Prince Caspian earlier this year). There seem to be a couple of variant covers for each of the movie tie-in books. 

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There are many TCON series that have cover art by Pauline Baynes, the original illustrator; at least in the US, her illustrations within the TCON books always remain, regardless of the cover art. The ones I've decided to collect are the full-color collector's editions in paperback (identical to the hardcover ones shown below).

source

 

The MN, LWW, HHB, and VotDT covers show idyllic scenes from the books (Aslan did romp with Susan and Lucy, although there was no mention of a daisy chain); the other three books' covers show more suspense. These are good, if a bit precious and of the time. Having the inside illustrations be in full color is very nice, as is the thick glossy paper. My most recent thrift store trip yielded a slightly creased copy of the full-color VotDT, so now I have all of them! 🤩

Obviously, I could track these down and order them online, instead of getting them from the thrift store as they show up, but where's the fun in that? 

AMAZING website I just found in looking up the different covers!!

The Secret of Kells

For St. Patrick's Day, Hulu has The Secret of Kells available to watch. I had been wanting to see it since it's about an illuminated manuscript/book that is real, the Book of Kells (largely considered Ireland's greatest national treasure, according to Wikipedia), and I heard the animation was amazing. I am so glad I finally got to watch it. It has pretty much everything I love: illuminated manuscripts, books, medieval stuff, mythology, early Christianity, gorgeous art, nature and forests, the triumph of light over darkness... I could go on and on. It's now one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't see anything this lovely and wondrous since the Morris Lessmore film. I love it so much.

Chi Ro monogram from the actual Book of Kells. [source] Chi and Ro are the first two letters of "Christ" in Greek, so it's basically a symbol for Jesus.

Blackout Poetry 2

See previous post. Pages from paperback book that was already falling apart, black colored pencil, black crayon.

Blackout Poetry

A popular thing to do on Tumblr is to make blackout poetry from single pages of books by blacking out with a marker or something all the words except for the ones you want to have, thus creating a poem from existent text. Book lovers often decry this as needless destroying of books. I kinda agree with them, but the result is often quite beautiful. Some of my favorite poems are blackout poetry. I think as long as they're old books that are going to be destroyed or thrown away anyway it's ok, but people shouldn't do that to perfectly good books. It's probably best not to think about where the sausage comes from. Anyway, I rediscovered a copy of That Hideous Strength that I had bought for like a quarter at a yard sale but had to replace with a similarly priced copy (with the same cover, of course) because the first 86 pages are missing and the rest are starting to fall out. It is an old book, from the seventies, and paperbacks are not very long-lived, especially if they are read a lot. I didn't have the heart to recycle it as I love C.S. Lewis and that is one of my favorite books, and I thought maybe I could make some book craft with the pages (the cover is this garish hideous '70s sci-fi thing that doesn't lend itself to lovingly created book art simply because it is too ugly). I wasn't quite sure what until I discovered blackout poetry. I decided to try my hand on it with the first remaining page.

Page from a paperback book, black colored pencil, black crayon

This one is actually three short poems since I couldn't think of a longer one. lol They are not connected. They read as follows:

the pale edges of

silence

seemed to be calling

~

the anachronism

met

the person in

her

~

things read and wrote 

were the substance;

to write

and

believe in the reality of

things not seen.

I'm kind of proud of it. The second one (the other side of the page) isn't quite as good, but I still like it, although my coloring job was like a million times more sloppy. Hazards include tearing the page and accidentally coloring over the word I wanted to keep.

Page from a paperback book, black crayon

 

This one is one poem. It's way less colored in/neatly since I was afraid the page might tear if I used the black colored pencil on both sides, so I just used black crayon. Poem is as follows:

a place

of

sunlight,–

of laughter and

wonder

and

better things

Not bad for my first try at it. I've already tried to do the next page but so far I'm not seeing anything. I could have been distracted by the Christmas music I'm listening to.