There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it …

… His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. … Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins, the four Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were coming to stay …

In the enchanted land of Narnia, Edmund and Lucy join King Caspian on a sworn mission to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia.  So begins a perilous new quest that takes them to the farthest edge of the Eastern world on board the mighty Dawn Treader.

Sailing uncharted seas, the old friends must survive a terrible storm, encounters with sea serpents, dragons, and invisible enemies to reach lands where magicians weave mysterious spells and nightmares come true.  They need every ounce of courage and the help of the great lion Aslan to triumph in their most hazardous adventure of all.

Book 3 in The Chronicles of Narnia series.

Eustace Clarence Scrubb might deserve his name. But he may not deserve to be magically drawn through his mom’s own wall painting—not into the land of Narnia, but into the seas around that magical world. His cousins Eustace and Lucy Pevensie adapt quickly to life aboard King Caspian’s majestic ship Dawn Treader. But the practical and 1940s-progressive Eustace will need to find his sea-legs, and a whole new nature, on this voyage beyond the map’s end. C. S. Lewis’s third Narnian story, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, sails readers into exciting yet strange new worlds that test our heroes’ virtue. Some readers (and more than a few movie-makers) may dislike the story’s episodic nature that lacks a single villain. Others will rightly come aboard ship not in search of “useful” things, but for honor and adventure.¹

Best for: Fans eight and up for personal reading, slightly younger for reading aloud.

Discern: Selfish and bratty behavior by cousin Eustace, yet always condemned; wicked slavers abduct and try to sell our heroes; more magical enchantments and transformations that are not always explained at the time, but are clearly according to the rules established by the Christlike lion Aslan; a darkness-surrounded island is said to bring anyone’s nightmares to life; Caspian is attracted to a star’s daughter.