Five Children and It

By E. Nesbit

First published in 1902

A set of young siblings who are loving yet also love to tease each other stumble upon something magical while playing one day, leading them on a series of adventures.  That sounds a lot like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, doesn’t it?  This book was written almost half a century prior to C.S. Lewis’ well-loved story.  Instead of transporting the reader to a magical world, in Five Children and It, the magic comes into our world.

Robert, Anthea, Cyril, and Jane, with their baby brother the Lamb in tow, stumble upon a sand fairy while digging in a gravel pit behind their home.  Lucky for them, the sand fairy is forced to grant its finders one wish per day.  The catch is that each wish will come undone at sunset.  This actually turns out to be a very good thing for the children, since they have a string of disastrous wishes.  With each foolish wish, the children have to spend the rest of the day surviving the consequences. 

Sometimes they wish for something most people would want, such as beauty (no one recognized them) or riches (given in the form of ancient gold guineas).  Sometimes the wish is accidental, such as when Cyril blurts out that he wishes his baby brother would just grow up.  They thought the Lamb was bothersome as a baby – just imagine what happens when that baby is suddenly a grown man.

One of my favorites is when the children wished for wings.  They had a wonderful day, soaring above the countryside.  After having a picnic atop a church bell tower, they dozed off.  When they awoke after sunset, their magic wings had disappeared, and they had to yell for help to get down from the top of the tower.  Needless to say, they had a lot of explaining to do! 

Be careful what you wish for is the obvious message of this book.  Through trial and error the children finally learn their lesson and end up wishing for the exhausted sand fairy to have a good long sleep in his gravel pit.

Question for the day:  If you had one wish, what would you wish for?  Be careful, though.  The consequences might be more than you expect.