The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian

C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian is a Narnia adventure for 8 year olds that begins with four children being yanked off a railway platform.

What happens

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are sitting on a station bench with their trunks piled around them. The holidays are over and nobody can think of anything to say.

Then Lucy gives a little cry like she's been stung by a wasp. Edmund says "Ow". Susan says someone is pulling her. Everyone's face has gone white.

They grab hands, and the platform vanishes.

Where they land is lovely at first. A wood, a beach, a very calm sea. They paddle about looking for shrimps and crabs. They eat the sandwiches far too early (Edmund's argument for doing so is excellent, and he is wrong).

Then they find an orchard gone wild, and a broken wall, and a courtyard. And Peter starts talking in a strange excited voice about a dais where the High Table used to be.

This is the bit a parent should know about, because it is the whole book in one go. These four were Kings and Queens here. They left a year ago. And the castle they ruled from has been in ruins for hundreds of years.

Edmund works out why while sitting on a rock. Time in Narnia doesn't run at the same speed as time at home. So they haven't come back to their Narnia. They've come back to the place where their Narnia used to be, rather like Anglo-Saxons wandering into modern England.

Your reader will feel that before they can explain it. There's a moment where Susan finds a little gold chess knight by the well and can't speak. It's such a small thing to be upset by. It's also exactly right.

There is a proper adventure after this, with a dwarf, a prince, an army and a great deal of sword fighting. But the feeling sitting underneath it all is the one about going back somewhere and finding it changed.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Worth knowing that this is a book about a war and there is real fighting in it. Nothing gory happens in the early chapters, but children are in danger and people do get hurt. A reader who coped with the battle in the earlier book will cope here.

It's much better read second, by the way. Quite a lot of this story assumes you already miss the place.

What to read next

So if your reader hasn't found the wardrobe yet, start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Same four children, an evacuation from the air raids, a very large house in the country, and a door at the back of an old wardrobe that doesn't stop where it ought to.