My favourite books when I was ten were… Guest Blog by Josephine Outhwaite

 The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

I have a confession to make… I, Josephine, do not like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I don’t like the Pevensie children. I got tired of Aslan’s talking in riddles. I’m not that interested in lion kings (Simba aside) or indeed wardrobes.

Now that that’s out of the way, I need to say that despite all of that, I LOVED the world Lewis created in the full series of The Chronicles of Narnia.

I spent a great many hours of my childhood enjoying some of the lesser known books from the series, and imagining the goings-on once the stories had ended. I’d read the whole series, start to finish and then start again at the beginning (and yes, I would still read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe despite hating it!).

My particular favourites were:

• Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia – my early introduction to the idea of a dystopian future. I cried at the start of this book!
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – adventures on the high sea! Now with added dragons.
• The Horse and His Boy – talking animals, adventures in new lands and mistaken identities. What’s not to love?!

My favourite characters were probably the haughty talking horse (Bree) and the duty bound but adventurous Prince Caspian. I’d have happily marooned the petulant and selfish Eustace on his very own desert island and this was rather fun to think about!

Not only that but there were so many new words (some that C.S. Lewis had of course made up) and I never once felt like I was being talked down to. Sometimes I’d have to read and re-read whole sections to work out what was happening and that only made me want to read more!

These books also introduced me to some very dark and scary things I hadn’t necessarily known about before – human slavery, peril at sea, mortal danger and self-sacrifice. I was fascinated and challenged and… I need to re-read these books immediately!

Strangely enough I have found out in the process of researching for this blog that they weren’t published in the order in which I read them. This presents me with a bit of a Star Wars conundrum but that is a worry for another day.

If you haven’t already, I definitely recommend you read The Chronicles of Narnia – even if you don’t like The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe!

Josephine Outhwaite


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