The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

While The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might be the most famous book in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, one could argue that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tells the most adventurous story of them all. No longer strangers to the land of Narnia, the youngest Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy, get whisked back to the magical land with their extremely irritating cousin Eustace Scrubb. Rather than being summoned to save the world from existential peril as in the series’ first book, Edmund and Lucy instead join up to help King Caspian fulfill his vow to search for the missing Seven Lords of Narnia. With those more relaxed stakes, the book takes the children and the reader on a delightfully creative adventure, where each new stop along the way only deepens the fantasy and mystery. Along their journey, they meet dragons and merpeople, encounter dangerous curses and more. Though it’s a more carefree reading experience, the book also explores themes of sacrifice, personal responsibility and commitment, and like the Chronicles before it, maturity. The novel succeeds most on its ability to instill a sense of wonder, adventure, bravery and heart in pursuing a dream and fulfilling a promise. —Peter Allen Clark

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