Fairy Tale Spotlight: Boxen [Book Review]

"Boxen" is a book written by C. S. Lewis and his brother W. H. Lewis when they were both very young children. They were pretty much hanging out in their attic around the turn of the century, surrounded by an uncountable number of books and little toys and put together an incredible world about animal people living around humans. It was never intended to be published... but it was way later in 1985.

"Boxen" is basically a collection of all the plays, documents, and even novels that make up the fictional world of the same name. Since this was written by little children, the editors have decided to leave in all the misspelled words, although I should say that they get much better at their spelling later on.

What is "Boxen" though? The basic premise is of a alternative Earth where animal people co-exist with regular humans. Animal-Land sits somewhere around India. Animal-Land is broken up into various sections which focus on each type of animal (ie. Mouse-Land and so forth).

The animals, however, are really just like humans with different ornaments. There may be some subtle quirks of personality, but they are really just normal people with weird faces and tails. By the time I got to the end of the book, I nearly forgot that they even were animals.

Although the book does have some very specific stories that the authors wanted to share, most of it is more about explaining the history of Boxen and about how the politics work. It's all pretty well explained, and I found myself fairly immersed. Also all the illustrations were also drawn by C. S. Lewis and his brother and they are amazing.

"Boxen" does not really have a main character, but it does have a person it tends to focus on the most. That would be John Big the frog. His entire career is related in "Boxen" in some way or another, from childhood to his death. He is a very stern and stately person who started off as a tutor and ends up deep into politics later on. Apparently he was loosely based on a child's perception of Winston Churchill at the turn of the century. This was all before the war, mind you.

The fun thing about John Big is that he tends to try and stay out of trouble, but when people really go after him, he will not hesitate to get physical. Although rare, you can convince him to beat you up and toss you out of a window. It's fun to see a man who is so good at keeping his cool absolutely lose his temper. He was a fun character and I like that the two kids focused on him so often.

One advisory I will give you about "Boxen" is that much of the original manuscripts of this book has been lost, leaving some of the stories incomplete or missing entire pages. The two authors never intended to publish this work. They were doing it to amuse themselves. This unfortunately leaves some stories completely missing an ending, and even after a sizable build up. If this sort of thing is too much for you to handle, you might want to avoid it.

On the contrary, if you like the idea of reading a story that seems far beyond the abilities of a little child, then you may want to try it out. There is still a lot of content here, and I was entertained by a lot of it. But as to a recommendation, it really just has to do with how you feel about a book being published in this way. For diehard C. S. Lewis fans: defiantly! For the casual reader... maybe not. Either way, this was an interesting read for what it was.

This blog was written on November 10, 2023.

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