Book

He was alone, his world was small and he dreamed of something more. Life was hard, but when do dreams come true? Suddenly, it changed and after that one encounter, everything was different, more exciting, grander, and fantastical than ever imagined. This is what drew me into my favorite book as a child. I read it over and over, cracked the spine, bent the cover, yellowed the pages. I was too devoted to the story to be careful about the book. Once the plot gets going, it is a roller coaster with twists, secret-identities, and double-secret identities, and magic impossible things. There is also the physical grind and monotony of the journey (as all epic journies actually are), there is the wonder of what they find, the race to the finish, and the frustration of not knowing what to do with emotions when discovered.

I read it again about two years ago, aloud to my daughter, as our bedtime story. We were reading through the series, but this book is outside the chronology. To me, it has always stood alone. There is no movie for it, no one fighting to be cast for it, no CGI budget. It is pure imagination fed by words, printed on the page, voiced by me as I opened the door to share its secrets with my daughter — a chance to experience what this book meant to me. The story did not disappoint; it was as rollicking as I remembered. We stayed up late too many times, sitting up, covers clutched, heart-racing, or hiding from embarrassment, dying of suspense.

In my mind, I was Shasta. Toiling away as the son of a fisherman, unaware of his true destiny. The horse that arrives one day, is like the book itself. In the story, the horse more or less kidnaps the boy, much in the same way that this book introduced me to the rest of the series and a wealth of other stories. I was racing off with them on their journey of adventure and discovery. I’d have never made it to Narnia without Bree first taking Shasta there.

The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis, 1954