In Part Eight August is reading C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Twice, R.J. Palacio quotes from the book. (p.255, p.273) What is the significance of the quotes in light of the story?

...though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.

Then they came out of the narrow valley and at once she saw the reason. There stood Peter and Edmund and all the rest of Aslan's army fighting desperately against the crowd of horrible creatures whom she had seen last night; only now, in the daylight, they looked even stranger and more evil and more deformed.