Four children step through the back of a wardrobe and come out in a wood where it is always winter. That is the doorway a hundred million readers have walked through since 1950, and this is the first time it has been cut down to thirty two board pages for a child who cannot hold a novel yet.

The abridgement keeps the shape of the story: the snow, the lamp post, the White Witch, the lion. Joey Chou draws it in flat, warm, poster bright color, which is a deliberate change of key from the usual Narnia illustration and reads beautifully across a room at bedtime.

Buy it for the baby shower and it will still be on the shelf when the same child is old enough for the seven novels. That is the whole argument for a board book of a classic.