The Chronicles of Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a snowy fantasy for 8 year olds about four children and a wardrobe that goes back a LOT further than it should.

What happens

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have been sent away from London because of the air raids. They end up in a huge old house in the country, with a Professor whose shaggy white hair grows over most of his face. On the first rainy day they go exploring.

In one empty room there's nothing but a big wardrobe. Lucy, the youngest, climbs in among the fur coats. She keeps going. And then there's snow crunching under her feet and a lamp-post glowing in the middle of a wood.

Who doesn't remember reading that bit for the first time?

Lucy meets a faun called Mr Tumnus, who takes her home for tea and toast by the fire. It's cosy and lovely, right up until he bursts into tears. He's under orders to hand any human child he finds to the White Witch, who keeps Narnia in winter. Always winter and never Christmas!

Then Edmund gets in. He meets the Witch herself. She gives him a hot drink and a box of enchanted Turkish Delight and asks lots of questions about his brother and sisters (always a bad sign).

Edmund is sulky and spiteful, and cross that Lucy was right all along. It's so easy to see how the Witch gets round him. The more he eats, the more he wants. Your reader will probably want to shout at him!

The whole book sounds like someone telling it to you out loud. The narrator chats away and pops in little asides, like reminding you that you should never, ever shut yourself inside a wardrobe. It's a brilliant one to read together at bedtime.

It has proper stakes too. Mr Tumnus is in real danger for letting Lucy go. The Witch has spies everywhere, and even some of the trees are on her side. Then the children meet the great lion Aslan and find themselves right in the middle of the fight to free Narnia.

What to read next

If they finish desperate to know how Narnia began, The Magician's Nephew goes right back to the start, with two London children, a very strange uncle and a door they really shouldn't have opened.