The Magician's Nephew

Digory and Polly are neighbors in Victorian London who become friends one dull summer and, exploring the attics that connect their houses, blunder into the study of Digory's peculiar Uncle Andrew — a dabbler in magic who tricks them into becoming the subjects of his experiment. Armed with a pair of magic rings, the children are flung out of their own world into the strange, in-between Wood between the Worlds.

Their travels take them to the dying world of Charn, where Digory wakes a terrible queen, and then, at last, to a place that is only just beginning. There they witness the very birth of Narnia, sung into being out of darkness, and learn how evil first entered a brand-new world — and why, in a later age, a certain lamppost and wardrobe would come to matter so much.

A prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Magician's Nephew is C. S. Lewis's origin story for Narnia: an inventive, wonder-filled adventure about creation, temptation, and consequences.