Five Children and It

I listened to this on audio, my first E. Nesbit book, and I was pleasantly surprised. Let's face it, children's fiction from more than a century ago often has aged badly, but this was not the case here at all! Nesbit writes in a timeless manner, full of wit and understanding of children's nature. His children are not too prim and proper. She captures their good heart, their childish way of reasoning and enjoying the world, their innocence and their mischievousness, making them very likable.

The story is episodic, with each chapter being about one of the wishes granted by the creature they find, and the plots are clever and amusing. Just an excellent children's book, perfectly readable today.

A fun and clever series of adventures for grade school kids, but it’s important to take them in the context of when they were published.

Five siblings (actually 4, because the fifth is too young to speak intelligibly) find a sand fairy, AKA a wish granter, and they harass it into giving the children one wish a day. Needless to say, these are children, and their half thought out wishes get them in trouble more often than not. It leads to that often used moral, "be careful what you wish for…"

But the children in this story step up to the challenge of fixing things after their wishes have gone wrong and, eventually, they learn from it.

Keep in mind, though, that this story were written in 1902. Written by Edith Nesbit, I'm happy to point show more out that even back then, a story could be written to pass the Bechdel test (my apparent reviewer theme for 2023), but it does not depict Indians well. They are literally described in the story as redskins, and the children dress up like redskins to the point where they paint their faces red. But this was 1902, and considering this, maybe you can give the lack of cultural sensitivity a pass. There are gypsies and carnival barkers too, and while the narrative alludes to these people as being dirty and poor schemers and connivers in a general sense, the Gypsies and carnival barkers in general don’t come across as inherently bad people. Nor do the Natives, for that matter.

There are also a few moments of the boys downplaying the importance of women or girls, but at least the girls don’t play into those stereotypes too heavily. So, in context, this was a fun read. If these kinds of sensitivities are bothersome, the reader can always skip over those chapters if they want, because each chapter is a new day and a new wish. show less

I wasn't actually expecting to like this book as much as I did. I wrongly presumed, since it was published over a hundred years ago, that it would be stuffy and rigid, or worse quaint and cute. The name E. Nesbit conjures images of very neat children in starched pinnies and hokey 1960s Disney adaptations. Anyway, I was wrong.

Nesbit has a large, quick and playful wit that is riddled throughout the story, with many humorous asides to the audience that absolutely must have inspired many of the children's writers who came after her, right into the modern day. The children often also act surprisingly like you would expect real children to act, and not at all like you would expect little Edwardians to behave. Well, obviously they do a bit, show more but still, it's all very enjoyable.

The only particularly bum note is the Red Indian chapter, which can't help but feel racist today. However, in its defence, when the wishes come true it is as the children would imagine it rather than true to life, so the fact that these Indians scalp people is just because that's what the children mistakenly believe, as they would in 1902 with their only knowledge coming from picture books.

One other possible weakness in the story is that despite there being five children, they do not have very defined personalities. Anthea is the most thoughtful, and Robert is the nastiest, but otherwise they are fairly interchangeable in each scene. It's also really weird that Nesbit refers to the children in plural as 'it' rather than 'they'. It just feels dehumanising. The reader might also get frustrated by how poorly every single one of their wishes turns out. Nesbit herself encourages the audience at one point to consider how you would have handled the situation better, because she knows that's exactly what you are doing each time. But it is a shame that they never get to have any fun throughout the entire book! It might have been nice to have had more of a finale, but I guess it wasn't that kind of story.

Anyway, it's an enjoyable, funny little fantasy adventure story for children and I would be interested to read more by E. Nesbit now that I know her writing style is so engaging. show less

A classic children's story from 1902, about five children (or, really, four children and their baby brother) who encounter a slightly bad-tempered magical creature who can grant wishes at a rate of one a day, with the limitation that whatever is wished for inevitably disappears by sunset. Which turns out to be a good thing, as, of course, the kids keep accidentally wishing for entirely the wrong things, or wishing for things that seem like a good idea but turn out less than ideally. They end up missing dinner a lot.

This was a favorite of mine when I was young. Revisiting books you loved as a child is always a little worrying, as there's a real possibility of discovering that they're not as good as you thought they were, thus tinging show more your beloved childhood memories with disappointment. But I'm pleased to say that this is not one of those books. I found it utterly charming, and every bit as delightful as I did as a kid. I think back then, I was probably mostly taken with the cute fantasy story. Now, what I mostly appreciate is the humor, including a lot of extremely amusing authorial asides that clearly come from someone who remembers what it's like to be a child but also has an adult's perspective on kids. And both adult me and kid me can appreciate the way the book has a pleasant sort of quaintness to it, while at the same time being as breezily readable as any modern kid's story, although I'm sure the younger me wouldn't have thought of it in quite those terms. show less

This book almost works as a collection of linked short stories; each chapter is a self-contained adventure in which the five children make a single wish each day, and the wishes invariably have unforeseen consequences. Most of the stories were okay given the time in which they were written, but wow did it get inappropriate in the last couple of chapters with the portrayal of Indigenous people. Also. the girls had naughty-sounding-to-modern-ears nicknames (Panty for Anthea aka Panther, and Pussy for Jane), which would be awkward for modern-day storytimes. And I was not fond of Nesbit’s almost ostentatiously prescriptive grammar: she seemed to go out of her way to say things like « everyone ate its supper ». She would obviously not show more approve of the singular they… show less

A London family takes a modest house in the country for the summer, and the five children discover a sand fairy with the power to grant wishes.

Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane, and their two-year-old brother whom they call the Lamb, also discover that wishes aren't always all they're cracked up to be. What could be more harmless than Jane's wish that they all be "as beautiful as the day"? How could wishing for untold wealth--in gold coins--go wrong? Yet over the course of the summer, the children find that more often than not they are figuring out how to get through to sunset, when the sand fairy's gifts go away.

This was a cherished favorite when I was a child, and it's still a lovely, wonderful book to read and reread. It ages very show more well; Nesbit's girls and boys are equally brave, clever, and loyal, with the impulsivity and unreliable judgment of real children.

Highly recommended. show less

Five children - Anthea, Cyril, Jane, Robert, and the baby, called Lamb - are taken to a summer house, and in the nearby gravel pit, they discover a Psammead, or sand-fairy, that grants wishes. Their wishes, of course, go wrong, one after the other, whether they are carefully thought-through or made impulsively. When they wish to be "as beautiful as the day," no one recognizes them and they are locked out of their house; when they wish for wings, they enjoy flight but get stuck at the top of a clock tower; when they wish for wealth, they are unable to spend their gold. Wishes for a besieged castle and for "Red Indians in England" likewise go awry.

The chapter "Scalps" is downright problematic and deeply uncomfortable, and the language is show more naturally somewhat old-fashioned throughout, as it was first published in 1902, but for those magic-loving readers willing to overlook the former and either put up with or enjoy the latter (the first-person omniscient narrator has a wryly humorous tone), this classic is still enjoyable, and certainly inspired many other beloved fantasy novels.

See also: Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager

Quotes

Trying not to believe in things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know. (165)

"But it's true," said Jane.
"Of course it is, but it's not true enough for grown-up people to believe it," said Anthea. show less