The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

Missed these when I was younger.
Catching up on some 'classics' - started with this so I could watch the movie.
Good reading.
Read in 2006 ( )

These a great books about adventure. You could use them to talk about geography, royalty or war. You can use these in small groups or whole group. ( )

This was an old fashioned adventure story. Fun, though it lagged and lost me in a few places. Perhaps I need a Narnia break before embarking upon the next book. ( )

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my undisputed favourite, however much I love all the others. It has everything that I love about Narnia in it -- the warm, personal narrator; Caspian; Reepicheep; my favourite Pevensies... There's something about the more episodic structure that appeals, too. There's lots of detail that I find lovely, even just the little detail, like the spell for the refreshment of the soul in the magician's book, and the way Eustace feels like it's peeling a scab off when Aslan peels off his skin, and the sea-people in their sea-kingdom.

I can't put my finger on why Caspian is my favourite character of all the Narnia books. My mental image of him is beautiful, which I suppose helps: there was very good, gorgeous cover art on my original edition, I think. And he's noble, and good. I suppose it also helps that he's human, that sometimes I want to kick him -- it makes him less than too good to be true.

This story is utterly golden in my mind. ( )

Probably my least contested favourite in the Narnia series. I had such a literary crush on Caspian, and I'd got a lot fonder of Edmund, too. And of course, it has Reepicheep! And a voyage to the end of the world, involving a lot of marvels along the way. Eustace, of course, is a turn-off at first -- you can't help but think he doesn't deserve to be in Narnia, and to be resentful that he could go and you can't -- but watching his character development is rewarding. He and Edmund are among the few characters that actually have character development: Peter, Lucy and Caspian were all born perfect, more or less, particularly Peter -- Lucy and Caspian have their moments of failure, but without consequence; Shasta and Aravis just needed to appreciate one another's good qualities; Susan has always been the rather reluctant, prissy, perhaps-not-worthy one.

Anyway, I always thought Dawn Treader was the most magical of the stories. And it still is. ( )