PRINCE CASPIAN

Very special, somewhat mystic fantasy, this is a sequel to last year's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are unexpectedly pulled back from an English railroad station to Narnia, the wonderful land out of our own time, where animals and trees talk, and where the children had last reigned as kings and queens. However, many Narnian years have past, and Kings Peter and Edmund, Queens Susan and Lucy find themselves with the great lion, Aslan, part of legend in a land where a cruel set of humans have taken over, where the talking animals, dwarfs, nymphs, satyrs and other Old Narnians are in hiding. It becomes the children's duty, following Aslan, to bring back the long-ago glory by aiding young Prince Caspian to gain the throne. Like many of Thurber's fables, this tempts adults to read on two levels, but for imaginative children, this is rich fairy-tale fare. More coordinated in construction, we think, than the preceding book.