The Silver Chair (by CS Lewis)

'The Silver Chair' is the sixth in the 'Narnia' series of books for children, written by CS Lewis.

The story opens with Jill Pole crying behind the school gym, because she has been bullied. No, it's not a school story, as the author hastens to reassure us. This is just the background to Jill starting to talk to Eustace Scrubb, another pupil in the school. Eustace used to be a most unpleasant child but recently has become much nicer. Out of curiosity she asks him what made him change, and he tells her a strange tale about being transported to another world with his two cousins.

The bullies discover where Jill has been hiding, so she and Eustace run away, and to their amazement find themselves somewhere totally unexpected, near the top of a high cliff. Eustace is terrified of heights, but Jill - who has no such fear - goes close to the edge, and disaster ensues... or so it would seem.

Jill is told that she has been brought to this place for a quest: to find a missing prince. To do so, she is given four important instructions, which she must learn and repeat daily, and follow absolutely. Then she is taken to the country of Narnia, where she and Eustace are given plenty of advice, and taken to meet one of my favourite characters in fiction: Puddleglum the marshwiggle. They set out on their journey, and several adventures follow.

This is a children's book, only 200 pages long, but as with all the best children's books it's just as enjoyable for teenagers or adults, and can be enjoyed at many levels. The adventures are exciting and fast-moving, as the children meet - amongst others - giants and a witch, but the characters are a great deal better developed than those in many books of this length. Eustace and Jill aren't nasty children, but they squabble and bicker, and inevitably forget about their instructions when more interesting distractions come their way.

Puddleglum is a wonderful character. Marshwiggles are not-quite-human people who live in the marshes in Narnia, eating eels and living in wigwams, observing the world from a generally pessimistic viewpoint. Puddleglum reminds me rather of Eeyore in the 'Winnie-the-Pooh' books, with his constant depressing observations combined with a determination to look on the bright side, for the sake of cheering everyone else up. One of my favourite lines occurs when the three travellers are standing at the top of a cliff which has a river running along the bottom of it:

'The bright side of it is,' said Puddleglum, 'that if we break our necks getting down the cliff, then we're safe from being drowned in the river.'

I'm not sure that young children would appreciate the irony in such humour, but as an adult I thoroughly enjoy it.

As with all of CS Lewis's fiction, 'The Silver Chair' can be read as a straightforward adventure quest, or as a simple battle between good and evil, or as a story with underlying allegorical meanings. The Christian analogies aren't so obvious in this as they are in some of the others; as a child I wasn't really aware of them at all, but they're certainly there. The most obvious one is that of following the given instructions, even when they don't seem to make sense, rather than being tempted by the comforts and pleasures that the world has to offer.

This is the sixth in CS Lewis's 'Narnia' series for children of which the best-known is 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. Although each of them could be read as a standalone book, it's probably best to read 'The Silver Chair' directly after 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', the book which describes Eustace's first journey to Narnia, and his gradual change to a nicer person.

The intended audience is children of about eight and above, and this is probably about right from the point of view of the average level of children reading to themselves. The vocabulary isn't difficult, but it certainly isn't simple and a beginner reader might struggle to understand it. Of course a fluently reading younger child could easily tackle this, and it makes an excellent read-aloud book.

However some parts are quite frightening for a sensitive child, so I'd recommend parents reading it first to check suitability. I didn't read it myself until I was about ten, and I found it a little scary even then. My sons were six and eight when I read it to them, and while the six-year-old loved it (and read it to himself shortly afterwards) my older son found it a quite disturbing. So I had to be careful not to read it at bedtimes.

Definitely recommended.