I'm reading the Narnia chronicles to our youngest. (You haven't read them? Quit surfing and go get them out of the library.) He doesn't seem to be enthused about The Horse and His Boy. I wasn't all that keen on it either until I was older. Maybe that's because the characters start out alien, with no point of contact or common interests. Shasta is a slave/son of a fisherman in a Persia-like country who meets a talking horse with whom he contrives to escape. My son's never met anybody like the main characters, and even horses aren't as common around here as a few generations ago (though some of the other 4H kids have some). Maybe I should have read Sinbad first...