<P> I think I agree with your (chronological) order for reading the books more than with your mother's . The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks . When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more . Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong . So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them . I'm not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published . </P> <P> In the 2005 Harper Collins adult editions of the books, the publisher cites this letter to assert Lewis's preference for the numbering they adopted by including this notice on the copyright page: </P> <P> Although The Magician's Nephew was written several years after C.S. Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series . Harper Collins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred . </P> <P> Paul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against this view, and continues, "most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis's deepest intentions". Scholars and readers who appreciate the original order believe that Lewis was simply being gracious to his youthful correspondent and that he could have changed the books' order in his lifetime had he so desired . They maintain that much of the magic of Narnia comes from the way the world is gradually presented in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--that the mysterious wardrobe, as a narrative device, is a much better introduction to Narnia than The Magician's Nephew, where the word "Narnia" appears in the first paragraph as something already familiar to the reader . Moreover, they say, it is clear from the texts themselves that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was intended to be read first . When Aslan is first mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, the narrator says that "None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do"--which is nonsensical if one has already read The Magician's Nephew . Other similar textual examples are also cited . </P>

Who narrates the lion the witch and the wardrobe