Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

First published: 1902; illustrated

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Family and the supernatural

Time of work: 1902

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: “The White House,” a summer rental home in rural Kent, England, and its environs

Principal Characters:

• The Psammead (Sand-Fairy), an ancient magical being able to grant wishes; brown, fat, and furry, with an irritable disposition
• Anthea, nicknamed Panther, the most mature five children, who has a maternal nature
• Cyril, the older boy, nicknamed Squirrel,
• Robert, the second boy
• Jane, the younger girl, nicknamed Pussy, who is likely to cry in a crisis
• The Lamb, the two-year-old baby of the family, whom the older children protect in most of their adventures

The Story

The adventures of the five children of the title are possible because, spending the summer in a rented country house, enjoying a freedom to roam denied them in London, they are able to explore their new world with little adult supervision when their parents are called away and the servants left in charge. Trying to dig their way to Australia, the children—Anthea, Cyril, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother, “The Lamb,”—inadvertently unearth and awaken a Psammead, or Sand-Fairy, a prehistoric creature with the power to grant wishes. Their discovery leads to a string of episodes, in which anything that can go wrong usually does.

Their first opportunity to wish catches them short of ideas until Anthea blurts out that she wishes they were all as beautiful as the day. Instantly, they are turned into such visions of loveliness that the servants do not recognize them, and they are forced to do without their midday dinner. Fortunately, each day’s magic dissolves at sunset. This initial adventure sets a pattern for subsequent chapters: a morning meeting with the Psammead to make that day’s wish, the irritable creature’s fussing and complaining before granting it, and the inevitable comic mishaps that ensue. In one episode, the children wish for great wealth. The Psammead complies, but it comes in the form of obsolete gold coins, which most shopkeepers will not accept and which excite the suspicion of the police. The children once again miss their lunches.

Sometimes wishes are made accidentally: A child may say, “Oh, I wish . . . ,” without thinking, and the Psammead gleefully traps him or her. For example, a wish that “everyone” would want the Lamb, whom the older children are tired of babysitting, leads to a frantic day of dodging would-be kidnappers, from a cartoonish society lady (many of the adult characters are broad comic types drawn from a child’s perspective) to an entire tribe of gypsies. This time the children do get fed—rabbit stew at the gypsy camp—but they have a serious scare about losing their baby brother, whom they appreciate more by the time dusk falls.

A two-chapter sequence involves the children’s wishing for wings. While they find the sensation of flying every bit as glorious as they had imagined, they are once again at risk of going hungry. Strangers flee from the sight of angel-winged children at their doors. Reduced to pilfering from an open kitchen window (though they do leave their pocket money in partial payment), the children fly to a nearby church roof to picnic on the stolen food, fall asleep, and wake up after sunset, wingless. The title of the next adventure—“A Castle and No Dinner”—underlines a basic preoccupation: What good is all this magic if I miss my dinner and my tea? The house becomes a besieged castle out of a storybook, and in a later, similar episode, it is surrounded by attacking Indians, who are portrayed as stereotypes of adventure fiction.

A wish that “The Lamb” be grown up leads to his becoming a supercilious twenty-year-old, unwilling to heed his brothers and sisters, who are terrified that he will run up to London and turn into a helpless, sleepy baby there at sunset, among strangers. The final episode also concerns family, when Jane thoughtlessly wishes some stolen jewelry into the room of their returning mother. To prevent a potential disaster requires drastic—and unselfish—measures. Anthea convinces the Psammead to grant a series of wishes to undo the tangle in return for a promise never to bother it again. She also wishes, however, that the children will meet it again some day. Exhausted, it agrees, and the book’s final paragraph promises surprises to come in future stories.

Context

Nesbit’s fantasies, especially the trilogy consisting of Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet (1906), are unusual in that they are principally comedic, even farcical, and that they are grounded solidly in the real world of Edwardian England and are populated by real children, not saintly role models and bad examples to be punished. Magic takes place in the child reader’s real world, not “once upon a time” or “long ago and far away,” and those who partake of it are not princes and princesses but real children in darned pinafores and torn stockings, spilling ink and milk, squabbling with their siblings, and making silly mistakes.

Moreover, their mistakes are viewed as just that—mistakes, not crimes and not sins. Ordinary faults of childhood, such as the need to appear important, are neither viewed as reprehensible nor punished severely. The natural credible behavior of Nesbit’s child characters, even in incredible fantasy situations, is one of her strongest assets. While specific customs may date her books (as well as occasional ethnic and class stereotyping, especially in patronizing comedy at the expense of the servants), the essential conduct of her child characters and her attitude toward them are surprisingly contemporary. Anthea, the eldest child, is somewhat overconscientious, but indeed children like that do exist, especially the eldest children in large families, and taken as a whole, the five children are refreshingly natural and normal.

The combination of magic at work in the real everyday world and its potential for humor is present in most of Nesbit’s fantasies; Edward Eager, writing in the United States in the 1950’s, quite openly admitted his indebtedness to Nesbit’s work in creating his own comic fantasies, such as Half Magic (1954) and The Time Garden (1958). Indeed, early in Half Magic, his characters discuss reading Nesbit’s books and wish such adventures might happen to them. If the pattern eventually becomes a formula—and it does for both authors—still, the imaginativeness of the original premise animating each book and the verbal wit of both authors’ styles, rich in irony, understatement, and respect for the child reader’s intelligence, represent a genuine and relatively rare achievement: thoughtful comedy that appeals to and stimulates the imagination.