Not too long ago, my eldest daughter decided it was time for my youngest daughter to join her in one of her favorite fandoms: Jurassic Park. Toward the end of the movie, my youngest got deeply agitated and asked, “Does it hurt the actors when those dinosaurs bite them?” No, we explained, those are just special effects. Robots and computer generated drawings. “Well,” she asked, “Does it hurt when the robots bite them?” All of us older folks had a good laugh about that. She was so young and full of wonder, and the world was full of living dinosaurs and strange things.

At the end of Prince Caspian, Peter announces that he will not be returning to Narnia, and neither will Susan, because Aslan has told them they are too old. As a kid this upset me, because I worried that I wouldn’t find a portal to Narnia before I aged out. As an adult, this had gotten all wrapped up in a variety of questions about what exactly Lewis means by this declaration, and especially how it connects to that big question that is lurking out in front of us in this series: What exactly happened to Susan Pevensie that she wasn’t invited into Narnia for the Last Battle?

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When the Pevensie children return to Narnia, their castle is in ruins, and the Golden Age of Narnia is all but forgotten. Talking animals and trees, dwarves and giants and satyrs are all considered to be myths or old wives’ tale. The death and resurrection of Aslan is scarcely remembered at all, and at one point Caspian’s Uncle Miraz not only denies Aslan, he says there’s no such thing as lions. Every true thing we readers know from the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been forgotten or corrupted. This sets the stage for Prince Caspian, a novel about—as Lewis once wrote in a letter—the “restoration of the true religion after corruption.”

There are strange, dueling narratives unfolding throughout the book. The Pevensies appear for three chapters, followed by four chapters of flashbacks about Caspian. Then four more with the Pevensies, and then another split, as the male characters dive into preparations for war and Susan and Lucy head off to attend a cultic Mystery feast.

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Jack Lewis’s publisher didn’t expect The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to be a smash success. In fact, he was concerned that it would do poorly and damage Jack’s reputation. But one thing he knew for sure was that, if it was going to be a children’s book, it would need to be a series. So before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe even came out, Jack turned his attention to writing a second book.

This story was completely disconnected from most of the characters of the first book. It was, in fact, a prequel, telling the story of how the lamppost in the Narnian woods came to be there. But Jack got stuck partway through the writing, and his publisher agreed with him that it wasn’t coming together in the best way, yet. So he turned his attention to another idea—this one about a magician who pulls a group of children into Narnia to help him fight a war. The book was called Drawn Into Narnia, and Lewis finished it quickly, writing the last words in 1949, before The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe hit bookshelves.

[This is, of course, the book which became known as Prince Caspian…]