Edith Nesbit

Five Children and It Edith Nesbit

This title is an entrancing combination of magic with the everyday trials of childhood. ´It´ is a Psammead, an ancient, ugly and irritable sand-fairy the children find one day in a gravel pit. It grants them one wish a day, lasting until sunset. But they soon learn it is very hard to think of really sensible wishes, and each one gets them into unexpected difficulties. Magic, the children find, can be as awkward as it is enticing. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail´s eyes... it had ears like a bat´s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider´s and covered with thick, soft fur... and it had hands and feet like a monkey´s.'It' was the Psammead, the grumpy sand-fairy that could, if in the mood, grant a wish a day. When the five children befriend him they find that each wish granted often has a sting in its tail. Golden guineas are too difficult to spend, wings let them down in a most inconvenient way, and when they wish for Red Indians, the children forget that they can sometimes be a little warlike. Generations of children have come to love the fantasy and the whimsy of the stories in the classic book from the author of The Railway Children.