Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan (audiobook) ~ Book Review

Meg Devonshire is a young woman attending Oxford University studying Mathematics and Physics.  Logic and truth and order are how her mind thinks.  When her beloved 8 year old brother, who is very ill and bedridden, starts reading C.S. Lewis novel "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" he becomes enthralled with the story and very curious as to where Narnia comes from.  She declares it's just a children's story, and certainly not true.  But as George keeps urging her to find out for him it sets Meg out on a quest to meet and ask the author who happens to be a professor at the University.  But instead of direct answers, C.S. Lewis and his brother take Meg on a journey of stories from their own childhoods that gave him the inspiration for his story and lets her come to her own conclusions.  After each session, Meg brings home the stories to her ailing brother opening up the stories in his imagination even more.  Though at times frustrated at the indirect answers to her question Meg continues to meet with the professor in order to give this gift to her brother as his health continues to fail.  But Meg never imagines that it will also turn out that she receives a gift also from the time spent listening to the brother's stories, a gift of hope that just a short time ago her logical mind would not have imagined.

I listened to this book on audio and it was a lovely story to listen to.  The narrator did a wonderful job.  While I have to say I have never read the Narnia series, I did watch the movies and always wondered where the characters came from in the mind of Lewis as some of them seemed steeped in folklore and mythology rather than anything Christian.  In this fictional imagining, the story explains a lot of that and was very interesting as the author wove it in.  It's a heartwarming story within a story and the power of imagination, about family and love and loss.  I enjoyed every minute of listening to it. 

I gave this a 9.5/10

Reading Challenge Goal Met:  To listen to several audiobooks