Do you know what it’s like to be “book drunk?” That feeling when you finish a book and all you want to do is crawl back into it and stay there awhile longer, even though the last page is read. The inability to move on, in real life or into another book. That’s what I mean when I say “Book drunk.”
And that was definitely my condition when I finished reading Patti Callihan’s Once Upon a Wardrobe. Here’s the blurb:
“Where did Narnia come from?”
The answer will change everything.
Megs Devonshire is brilliant with numbers and equations, on a scholarship at Oxford, and dreams of solving the greatest mysteries of physics.
She prefers the dependability of facts—except for one: the younger brother she loves with all her heart doesn’t have long to live. When George becomes captivated by a copy of a brand-new book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and begs her to find out where Narnia came from, there’s no way she can refuse.
Despite her timidity about approaching the famous author, Megs soon finds herself taking tea with the Oxford don and his own brother, imploring them for answers. What she receives instead are more stories . . . stories of Jack Lewis’s life, which she takes home to George.
Why won’t Mr. Lewis just tell her plainly what George wants to know? The answer will reveal to Meg many truths that science and math cannot, and the gift she thought she was giving to her brother—the story behind Narnia—turns out to be his gift to her, instead: hope.
The blurb makes the book sound wonderful, but even it can’t describe how this story wove itself into my mind and heart. Here is the review I left on Goodreads:
It’s been two and a half weeks since I finished reading Once Upon a Wardrobe, and I have spent those two-plus weeks re-reading the Narnia books, just as I mentioned in my review. I’m so glad I did. Today I am starting the seventh and final book in the series. But as for the book that sent me back to Narnia …
Magical. Simply magical.
~robin
