The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew is the Chronicle in which the reader learns about the creation of Narnia.  In this book, Digory Kirke (Professor Kirke of LWW as a child) meets the girl next door, Polly Plummer, while he is crying about his mother, who is very ill.  She sensibly diverts his attention to other, more interesting things, like the fact that there is a tunnel in the attic linking every house in their row of houses.  They decide to explore it, because they have heard stories of an empty house next door to Digory's house.  They plan an expedition and start out as soon as possible.  They in fact misjudge how far it is fom one side of one house to another, and accidenally end up in Digory's attic, where his Aunt Letitia has made him promise not to go.  His Uncle Andrew, Letitia's brother, has his residence up there, and it is there that he works on his magical experiments.  When Digory and Polly accidentally arrive in his room, he takes advantage of Polly's youth and "innocently" offers her a yellow ring.  She accepts, thinking, oh, he's not so crazy after all--and the second she touches a ring, she disappears.  No smoke, no pop, just no Polly.  Digory screams, and Uncle Andrew threatens him with frightening his mother if he screams again.  Andrew's plan is working perfectly so far; he explains the difference between the yellow and the green rings (the yellow rings take one out of this world and the green bring one back) and tells Digory that he'll have to go after Polly because she doesn't have a green ring.  Digory agrees to help Polly, but first tells his uncle that he is just another evil magician like in the old stories, and the evil magicians always got what was coming to them.  He then puts on a yellow ring, and finds himself rushing upwards in a deep pool.  Once he climbs put of the pool, he sees that he is in a wood with many pools in between the trees.  He later describes the place as "rich, rich as plumcake."  The wood has a drowsy quality, so much that Digory feels he has always been there, and once he and Polly see each other, she has to remind him that he just came out of a pool a minute ago.  After a few words to each other they recognize each other, and then work out what happened with Uncle Andrew.  Polly wants to immediately go home, but Digory has noticed the other pools.