Growing up a pastor's son/ homeschool kid, it was probably inevitable that I would read The Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis' only works for children were not 'dumbed down' versions of his other works but rather a series of fairy tales that applied theological principles to stories of witches, dwarfs, fauns, and centaurs. I think my favorite tale in the chronicles is The Horse and His Boy. It centers around Shasta- the adopted 'son' of a cruel fisherman who plans to sell the boy as a slave, Avaris-the daughter of a noble family who's on the run from an arranged marriage, and Bree and Hwin- two Narnian horses from a breed granted by Aslan with the gifts of intelligence and speech but held captive in the tyrannical Kingdom of Calormen like normal horses. Aslan helps their escape, but often without their knowledge and probably not in ways they would choose.
