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E. Nesbit
Paperback | Pages: 237 pages Rating: 3.88 | 21887 Users | 996 Reviews
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| Original Title: | Five Children and It |
| ISBN: | 0140367357 (ISBN13: 9780140367355) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Five Children #1, The Psammead Trilogy |
| Setting: | Kent, England |
Commentary To Books Five Children and It (Five Children #1)
I read Five Children and It with the Women’s Classic Literature Enthusiasts group and enjoyed it immensely. If you like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and its series' mates by Betty MacDonald, you will like Five Children and It. The ideal child reader of this book is between second and fifth grade, with a fondness for historical fiction or British classics. (For comparison, this is substantially easier reading then C.S. Lewis’ fiction.) The ideal adult reader is anyone who enjoys classic children’s novels and/or Edwardian literature.Five Children and It was published in 1902 and is the first novel in Nesbit’s Psammead trilogy, which consists of Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet(1906). In Five Children and It, a group of siblings (Anthea, Robert, Cyril, Jane, and a baby who is referred to as the Lamb) find the Psammead in a sand quarry near their home in the English countryside. The Psammead is a sand fairy able to grant wishes. This classic takes us to Edwardian England, where horses and buggies were the most common form of transportation, and servants looked after the children.
*If you are spoiler-averse, you may want to stop reading further.*
The most successful aspects of Five Children and It were the world-building, the authentic relationships between and amongst the children, and Nesbit's writing style. I could relate to the children and their emotions. They were described and interacted in a way that fit their ages and I found them to be differentiated in age-appropriate manners. Nesbit’s writing style struck just the right tone for me, between communicating a moral and having fun. The morals weren’t overblown or eye-rolling. The vocabulary didn't strike me as dumbed-down for children, but it also was not as flowery and ornate as Frances Hodgson Burnett's contemporaneously written works and was a style I found highly appealing.
For 75% of the book, the adventures worked for me, and my pre-6th-grade self would have adored this book because it doesn't talk down to children and is sufficiently complex to appeal to adults. The sexist and racist elements (one chapter involves gypsies) grated on me but were tolerable, if Nesbit’s handling is appropriately appreciated as progressive in the context of her 1902 peers, until I encountered "Scalps" (it describes an adventure populated by “red Indians”) which made me want to take a shower. YMMV. The last story involving the mother and stolen (or magically relocated) jewelry was unsuccessful for me, and I am not certain why - although I suspect that the mother's involvement in the story makes it less of an adventure and more of a problem to be solved; less charming and imaginative and more dire.
As with the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series, the chapters of Five Children and It read like a series of only-lightly-connected short stories, some of which were more successful than others. It was great fun, though, a super-quick read (6 hours perhaps?) and I recommend it to anyone who reads the description and is intrigued, or who is a fan of Edwardian classics.
Background on the author: E. Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey in 1858. The death of her father when she was four years old and the continuing ill health of her sister meant that Nesbit had a childhood absent focused adult attention, and frequent moves. Her family moved across Europe in search of healthy climates for her sister, only to return to England for financial reasons. Growing up, she lived in France, Spain and Germany in addition to various locations in Great Britain. Her education came from a combination of periods in local elementary/grammar schools and the occasional boarding school but predominately through reading. Nesbit wanted to be known as a poet and in her teens had a poem published. This gave her greater confidence to write more, both for adults and children, but it is for her 60+ children's books (including those on which she collaborated with other authors) she is best known. She distinguished herself from other writers of her time by writing about children as they were, and rewriting conventional adventure stories to present them with female characters in lead roles.
Her friends included HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw. She also was a political activist and a follower of William Morris and she and her husband Hubert Bland were among the founders of the Fabian Society, a socialist organization later affiliated to the Labour Party. Nesbit was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism during the 1880s.
Interesting links and articles (which may, necessarily, include spoilers):
http://www.foliosociety.com/author/ed... (biography)
https://lit4334goldenage.wordpress.co...
http://muse.jhu.edu/article/271157
Point Epithetical Books Five Children and It (Five Children #1)
| Title | : | Five Children and It (Five Children #1) |
| Author | : | E. Nesbit |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 237 pages |
| Published | : | December 1st 1996 by Puffin (first published 1902) |
| Categories | : | Fantasy. Classics. Childrens. Fiction |
Rating Epithetical Books Five Children and It (Five Children #1)
Ratings: 3.88 From 21887 Users | 996 ReviewsWrite-Up Epithetical Books Five Children and It (Five Children #1)
This was a rather pleasant trip down memory lane for me, as I distinctly remember rushing home from school in order to watch the TV adaptation of this book. Unfortunately though, I didn't enjoy this as much as I had anticipated.I can understand why this book is a children's classic. It is different, imaginative, and really, let's be honest, who wouldn't want to casually find a sand fairy?This book lacked something for me. Something that I cannot quite put my finger on, but it has definitelyThis is a perfectly delightful story of the misadventures of five siblings who are granted a daily wish by a prehistoric creature who lives in the sandpit near their home. One of the eleven chapters would, by modern standards, be deemed racist. However, this fault might be overlooked when the reader considers the date of publication and could be used as a teachable moment if reading with a child. All in all, this entertaining tale elicited many chuckles and the occasional loud guffaw! The most
Five children practically left on this own in a English countryside. This book was published in 1902, almost 50 years before C. S. Lewis wrote his The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.However, the similarity ends there. The story of Five Children and It does not bring you to a magical world at the back of a wardrobe. Rather, what the five children, Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb find is a Psammead or a sand fairy has gotten buried in the sand since the Stone Age.
This book just was not for me. I think if I had read it as a child I would have liked it a lot more. I found it so repetitive and the children to be obtuse. If I had not listened to the audiobook I'm not sure I would have gotten through it. Very well written, it was the story itself I did not care for. :(
I wish I'd read them earlier, but I didn't read Nesbit's books until I was in high school. This was the first one I read and I loved it. The children are refreshingly normal. They bicker, they make mistakes, they are tender but also sometimes selfish. I found later that that is a hallmark of Nesbit's writing. In this story, the five sibling's find a grumpy but magic creature who will give them one wish every day. Of course, wishes don't always work out as one planned. If you loved Half Magic or
Nesbit is the great-grandma of pretty nearly all the children's fantasy books we love, the first author to write really wittily for kids and without condescending to them, and the originator of the basic structure that carries on through C.S. Lewis and Edward Eager and even in a way Jo Rowling: four children, usually siblings or cousins but sometimes friends, stumble on a magical something that leads them into a series of fantastic adventures and important discoveries (gently conveyed) about the
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