Five Children and It

Rating:
Summary: Be careful what you wish for...
Review: E. Nesbit's classic story of about some Edwardian children who find a sand fairy one summer is an unsentimental delight. Each day the odd fairy grants them one magic wish, be it beauty, wealth, great size, etc. which will only last until sunset. Somehow each wish they make turns into a disaster, but through their own cleverness and a bit of luck, the children are able to make each problem work out in the end. Nesbit's writing is particularly full of amusing asides and offbeat humor in this one. Her turns of plot are inventive, and as the plucky children face their outlandish predicaments, it becomes clear that Nesbit has her finger on the pulse of the way real children might think. Her work has held up quite well considering it is over a hundred years old. This novel would be suitable for kids in about fourth or fifth grade.

Rating:
Summary: sadly, this classic does not stand up to the test of time
Review: Edith Nesbit is a charming writer. She tells her story with wit and humour, and interjects sly digs that engender a wink and a smile, but while the premise is timeless and interesting, the prose is extremely dated, making the book a bit tedious to read for any length of time. Also, the ideas and prejudices exhibited by the characters date the material.

The five siblings of the title, who have found a Sand-fairy willing to grant them one wish a day, continually make silly wishes that get them into trouble. Their first wish is to be "as beautiful as the day". Right there you get a sense of the book's outdated charm. This is of interest more as a tribute to a talented children's writer of a bygone era rather than for its own sake.

I wanted to enjoy this classic, but I found it hard slogging through. That is just my opinion, however, but I'd suggest you read a bit of the text before purchasing it unless you're already familiar with, or particularly interested in, author Nesbit.

Caveat: The occasional black-and-white line drawings are by H.R. Millar, not the Paul Zelinsky watercolors promised in the Editorial Reviews section.

Rating:
Summary: Five Children and It
Review: I believe that this book is great. I love fantasy books, and even more, magic ones. This book is totally great, and when I was reading it, I imagined myself in the book, in the same place, and doing the same things the five Children did. It is funny, that "IT", asks for food, and how creative the author is, because the wishes only lasts until sunset. I loved the book. Congratulations Edith Nesbit!

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books from childhood.
Review: I discovered this book in fourth or fifth grade and went on to patiently track down everything else by E. Nesbit. Rereading it, I'm still struck by her boundless imagination, sharp wit, and dead-on dialogue. The heroes of the story are real kids with real personalities - rare even now, much less in a Victorian children's novel. Many scenes make me laugh even at the upteenth reading, such as when the kids have to think up "Red Indian" names on the fly and come up with Panther, Squirrel, and Bobs of the Cape Mounted Police. I suppose some passages are a little sophisticated for some readers, but most kids today are already familiar with British turns of phrase through the Harry Potter books and should not have much trouble with this one. In fact, I would strongly recommend Five Children and It to anyone who enjoys the Harry Potter books, as it offers a similar blend of magic, adventure, humor, and memorable characters.

Rating:
Summary: A cynic's delight
Review: I doubt I would have liked "Five Children and It" even as a child: an ordinary child's troubles are so much more troublesome than the challenges these kids face, it's almost (but not quite) funny. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane live in a countryside mansion replete with servants, they take trips to toy stores where they can buy whatever their hearts desire (the author informs us that this is the way children ought to be brought up), and inside a gravel-pit they have found a prehistoric sand-fairy that grants them wishes, one each day, but all their wishes have been turning out rotten so far. Well, boo hoo.

It isn't the concept that bothers me; it is the execution. Baum's and Carroll's heroines face comparable situations, but neither authors' books evoked such negative reactions from me. The reasons why the children's wishes fail I found especially abominable: when peerless beauty is wished for, the maid won't let them in since they look like "eyetalian monkeys"; when wealth is asked for and antique guineas appear by the bushel, the kids are arrested for thieves; when stolen jewellery magically reappears, it is Beale, the gameskeeper, who is immediately and incontrovertibly the chief suspect; when the four wish (accidentally) for the baby to grow up, the Lamb (Or Devereuz, or Hilary, or St Maur, as he should be rightly called) becomes a snappish fop. Nesbit draws miscellaneous moralistic lessons from her tale ("I cannot pretend that stealing is right"), but what use are these lessons when you are arrested whether or not you tell the truth? I would much rather Nesbit turn a cynical eye on the people she is describing, instead of using her keen powers of observations to weave an antithetical yarn.

At least her prose is reasonable enough. Nesbit's language is lucid, and while her sentence structure is rather sophisticated, it is not unduly so. Sadly, the same cannot be said of her characters. The four children who are the novel's protagonists are essentially the only developed characters, and while they are developed rather well, with plausibility and realism, they are bland. They are honest, noble, polite, friendly, sociable, and well-off; they treat the servants and people of lower station as functionaries, tools, ways of getting from A to B, and so does the author. Thus, there is little desire on the reader's part to come to know them better. They allow little conflict, little empathy. I'm probably the first to levy the charge that they have little wit and, if not for the fact that the wishes disappear at sundown, they would have great difficulty dealing with ther wishes.

But more about those wishes: it is quite surprising how many of them are accidental. In fact, there is little premeditated wishing going on past chapter six: otherwise, Nesbit would have been hard-pressed to find a reason for the children to wish for marauding Indians. What lesson are we, as readers, to draw from this? "Word your wishes carefully?" I'm reminded of the movie "Big," in where a twelve-year-old wishes to be grown-up to impress an older girl, and instead becomes Tom Hanks and scares the heck out of everybody. Just once I'd like a book where the characters get their hearts' true desires and have to come to terms with THAT.

Rating:
Summary: A 100 year old wish come true - ?It? won?t disappoint you!
Review: I have to admit that this book has an odd title. The "Five Children" part is easy enough to figure out - that refers to Robert, Anthea, Jane, Cyril, and their adorable young brother who has the pet name "the Lamb". But what on earth is "It"? As it turns out, "It" is a Sand-fairy, or Psammead. And like the title, the Psammead is odd. "It" is small, round and furry with snail-like eyes and bat-like ears. But the Psammead's odd-ness is matched by its extraordinary potential. It has the power to grant one wish a day, lasting until sunset. And so when the five children stumble across this magical Psammead while playing in a gravel-pit, they quickly learn that wishes can come true!

But the children soon discover that having your wishes come true is not always as pleasant as it might seem. Wishes for beauty and wealth result in an unexpectedly bitter after-taste that confirms that these much coveted wishes are not as grand as most people think. Other wishes lead to harrowing adventures, such as being in a beseiged castle, and being stalked by Indians. Still other wishes result in rather bizarre scenarios, such as having wings, being the size of a giant, or being grown-up. But in each case the children soon end up yearning for time of day when the wish will come to an end, as one of them remarks: "We're getting into the habit of longing for sunset."

But as a reader of this tale, you'll find yourself quickly wishing for day-break, and for another exciting day to begin with another exciting wish to be fulfilled. This book may have been written about 100 years ago in 1902, but it hasn't lost any of its charm. When Edith Nesbit wrote this book (her first "magic" book) it was an instant success. It is equally beloved today - and with good reason! The magical adventures are full of charm and excitement. Yet they convey important moral lessons, such as the transitory nature of beauty and wealth - "neither had exactly made them happy." Generally speaking each chapter features a new wish and a new adventure that lasts until sunset. It's a great read-a-loud book for young children, guaranteed to enthral and please with its wonderful blend of magic, adventure, and humor. I must warn you that when the book does come to an end, you will be disappointed. But only because it means the end of the children's enthralling magical adventures! To have a book that can have such an effect - now that is a wish come true!

Rating:
Summary: Sandy delight
Review: This 1902 fantasy, a gift from my parents when I was in fourth or fifth grade, features an irritable Psammead whom Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother dig up in a sand pit. Then the magic begins. The sand-fairy does not like granting wishes, and his misshapen body with bat's ears and snail's eyes bloats when he does. The wishes, lasting only until sunset, all take unexpected, funny turns.

The sand-fairy and other personalities and Victorian details render the magic entirely real-world, believable. This was my favorite children's book and I relived the delight when I found a copy to share with my own children. That this volume is illustrated by one of my favorite people from one of my favorite families triples the delight.

The book is too challenging for independent reading for children under 10, but it's a great read-aloud for small children, as are the classics of Frank Baum, E.B. White and C.S. Lewis.

Edith Nesbit was like J. K. Rowling a single mother in need of a means to support her children. Her books in their era were as popular as Harry Potter in this one. Some of her observations are surprisingly humane. Nesbit's treatment of a clan of Gypsies, for example, transcends the deep prejudice of her time. Not to worry, the book is not preachy or teachy. It's just grand, eloquent fun. Alyssa A. Lappen

Rating:
Summary: My review of "Five Children and It"
Review: This book is about Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother who discover a Psammead,
or Sand-fairy, who agrees to grant the children one wish per day.
Soon, their wishes start to turn quite unlike what they expected.
Then, an accidental wish has terrible consequences, and the kids
are faced with a hard choice: to let an innocent man be charged
with a crime, or to lose their gift of magical wishes.

I read this book in one day, and I thought it was pretty good.
This book turned out to be fairly interesting.
I would probably read "Five Children and It" again.

Rating:
Summary: Marvels and wonders
Review: This book, now approaching its hundredth birthday, was one of the great discoveries of my childhood. It's a little more demanding, perhaps, than most contemporary "intermediate" fiction, although it's possible that Harry Potter has opened some minds to the possibilities of this sort of fantasy. I would recommend the sand-fairy series to any child who loves Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, or the wry works of John Bellairs.