Hi ,

Lucy is the first one through.

That matters. Lewis didn't send Peter — the oldest, the natural leader. He didn't send Edmund, who would have found a way to make it about himself. He sent Lucy. The youngest. The one most likely to be dismissed.

And when she comes back and tells the others, they don't believe her. Edmund is cruel about it. Peter and Susan are kind but unconvinced. Lucy is left in the painful position of knowing something true that no one will accept.

Lewis doesn't rush past this. He lets Lucy sit in it for a whole chapter. She knows what she saw. She knows it was real. And she has to decide whether to keep saying so even when no one believes her.

There's something worth talking about with children here that goes beyond the story. Because children know this feeling — of seeing or knowing something true and having adults explain it away. Faith often begins in exactly that place: a conviction that something is real before you can prove it to anyone else.

The question I find most useful for this scene:

"Have you ever known something was true even when no one else believed you? What did you do?"

That question tends to go somewhere unexpected. Try it.

-Craig