Five Children and It

About the book

Playing in the countryside, the children discover a sand-fairy called a Psammead, whose capacity to grant wishes promises a remarkable improvement on ordinary holidays. Their attempts to use that power soon reveal how much a wish leaves unspecified. Beauty, money, wings, and other apparently desirable changes produce difficulties that require improvised explanations and cooperation before the day is over. Nesbit keeps meals, adults, household expectations, and sibling disagreements present within the fantasy, making magic answer to the stubborn details of daily life. The Psammead's own temperament also prevents it from becoming a conveniently obedient helper. Each adventure exposes another gap between an imagined advantage and its consequences, while the children's resourcefulness makes their mistakes a source of comic action rather than merely a sequence of moral lessons.

• Wishes and consequences
• Cooperation
• Imagination and everyday life

Why read it

For fantasy that gives magical wishes the wonderfully inconvenient consequences of real family life.

English text