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.