One of my favourites as a kid, and the earliest book I can clearly remember reading. As an adult, of course, the experience is different, and one can see the places where it doesn't quite hold up so much. But the nostalgia value is so high that it drags the book up to five stars anyway, simply because of the total delight this book gave me and my sister when we were young. (A great deal of credit for that delight must go to the BBC adaptation - we took endless pleasure in mocking both poor Lucy and the worst beaver costumes ever to have been created.)

Even as a kid, this wasn't my favourite of the Narnia books (that honour went to The Horse and His Boy) but the two books together were the stand-out stars of Narnia for me, and were responsible for a lifelong love of fantasy that continues to this day.