Title: The Magician's Nephew

Author: Lewis, C.S.

Book Preview:

As Digory and Polly enter the magical world of Narnia, they are taken into an adventure in which they must help the great Aslan put an end to the evil witch, Jadis.  They try to find a special healing apple for Digory's dying mother back at home.  This same apple will help save Narnia from Jadis' power.  They will not rest or leave Narnia until they find it.

Rating:

I like this book mainly because it was so exciting. When Digory and Polly found Jadis, everything became very exciting. Jadis was very dangerous because she had so much strength. When she wasn’t in her world she didn’t have her magical powers, but she had so much strength that she lifted up a lamppost and knocked out several people. She was a problem for everybody throughout the book and never got beaten or destroyed in any way.

Another reason I liked this book is because it was so descriptive. When Narnia was being created, the author made it very interesting and descriptive. You could picture everything in your mind very clearly, like when the author told about "the grass spreading out from the lion like a pool." I could just imagine it happening.

The characters were very interesting and caught my interest. The author didn’t add too many, or too few characters. I thought they were all important to the story, and each had their own personality. There were many details on each of the characters also.

The beginning wasn’t very good so I didn’t want to read it as much as I wanted to read the middle and the end. The one thing I didn’t like about the beginning was that the author really didn’t describe the characters very well. I think he didn’t because he put a list of the characters at the beginning of the book but only briefly described them. I think the author did this because there are so many books in The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted to just put them all into one book and describe them very briefly.

Since this book is one of The Chronicles of Narnia books, it didn’t have much of an ending but really made you want to read the next book. Even though it wasn’t a cliffhanger for the next book of its series, it was still a very good ending. [Claire]

This book had great detail, which is why I liked the book. For example: The face of this boy was very grubby. It looked as though he rubbed his hands in the earth and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. It drew a clear picture in my head.

I think the introduction was great, but I think that it started a little too quick. In fact that is what I would have changed. I think the author didn’t do that because he just wanted to get in on the action quickly.

The book was well organized. I could keep the events in order. I think that this book was so well organized that I could read another book and still keep the events straight.

Also this book was a "real page turner" because I couldn’t put it down! I am going to read the whole series. I think that everyone else should too!

This book had a great ending! I really didn’t expect that to happen. The author was very good at being unpredictable. That was another thing that I liked.  [Rachael]