_1st_ed.jpg) First edition | |
| Author | Edith Nesbit |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | H. R. Millar |
| Language | English |
| Series | Five Children[1] (a.k.a.Psammead) series[2] |
| Genre | Children's literature Fantasy |
| Publisher | T. Fisher Unwin |
Publication date | 1902 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| OCLC | 4378896 |
| Followed by | The Phoenix and the Carpet |
| Text | Five Children and It... atWikisource |
Five Children and It is afantasychildren's novel byEnglishauthorE. Nesbit. It was originally published in 1902 in theStrand Magazine under the general titleThe Psammead, or the Gifts, with a segment appearing each month from April to December. The stories were then expanded into a novel which was published the same year. It is the first volume of a trilogy that includesThe Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) andThe Story of the Amulet (1906). The book has never been out of print since its initial publication.
Like Nesbit'sThe Railway Children, the story begins when a group of children move fromLondon to the countryside ofKent. The five children (Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother, Hilary, known as "the Lamb") are playing in agravel pit when they uncover a rather grumpy, ugly, and occasionally malevolent Psammead, a sand-fairy with the ability to grant wishes. The Psammead persuades the children to take one wish each day to be shared among them, with the caveat that the wishes will turn to stone at sunset. This, apparently, used to be the rule in theStone Age, when all that children wished for was food, the bones of which then becamefossils. The five children's first wish is to be "as beautiful as the day." The wish ends at sunset and its effects simply vanish, leading the Psammead to observe that some wishes are too fanciful to be changed to stone.
All the wishes go comically wrong. The children wish to be beautiful, but the servants do not recognise them and shut them out of the house. They wish to be rich, then find themselves with a gravel-pit full of goldspade guineas that no shop will accept asthey are no longer in circulation, so they cannot buy anything. A wish for wings seems to be going well, but at sunset the children find themselves stuck on top of a churchbell tower with no way down, getting them into trouble with thegamekeeper who must take them home (though this wish has the happy side-effect of introducing the gamekeeper to the children's housemaid, who later marries him). Robert is bullied by the baker's boy, then wishes that he was bigger — whereupon he becomes eleven feet tall, and the other children show him at a travelling fair for coins. They also wish themselves into a castle, only to learn that it is beingbesieged, while a wish to meet realRed Indians ends with the children nearly beingscalped.
The children's infant brother, the Lamb, is the victim of two wishes gone awry. In one, the children become annoyed with tending to their brother and wish that someone else would want him, leading to a situation whereeveryone wants the baby, and the children must fend off kidnappers andGypsies. Later, they wish that the baby would grow up faster, causing him to grow all at once into a selfish, smug young man who promptly leaves them all behind.
Finally, the children accidentally wish that they could give a wealthy woman's jewellery to their mother, causing all the jewellery to appear in their home. It seems that the gamekeeper, who is now their friend, will be blamed for the robbery, and the children must beg the Psammead for a complex series of wishes to set things right. It agrees, on the condition that they will never ask for any more wishes. Only Anthea, who has grown close to It, makes sure that the final wish is that they will meet It again. The Psammead assures them that this wish will be granted.
The Psammead is described as having "eyes [that] were on long horns like a snail's eyes. It could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's" and whiskers like a rat's. When it grants wishes it stretches out its eyes, holds its breath and swells alarmingly.
The five children find the Psammead in agravel pit, which used to be seashore. There were once many Psammeads, but the others died when they got wet and caught cold. It is the last of its kind. It is thousands of years old, and rememberspterodactyls and other ancient creatures. When the Psammeads were around they granted wishes that were then mostly for food. The wished-for objects turned into stone at sunset if they were not used that day, but this does not apply to the children's wishes because what they wish for is so much more fantastic than the wishes the Psammead granted in the past.[3]
The word "Psammead", pronounced "sammyadd" by the children in the story, appears to be a coinage by Nesbit from the Greekψάμμος "sand" after the pattern ofdryad,naiad andoread, implicitly signifying "sand-nymph". However, its hideous appearance is unlike traditional Greeknymphs, who generally resemble beautiful maidens.
The book's ending was clearly intended to leave readers in suspense:
"They did see it [the Psammead] again, of course, but not in this story. And it was not in a sand-pit either, but in a very, very, very different place. It was in a – But I must say no more."[4]
The children reappear inThe Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) andThe Story of the Amulet (1906). The Psammead is offstage in the first of these sequels (it is simply mentioned by the Phoenix, who visits it three times to ask for a helpful wish when the situation becomes difficult), but it plays a significant role in the second sequel after the children rescue it from a pet shop. An omnibus edition of the three books titledFive Children was published in 1930.[1] The trilogy is also known as thePsammead series.[2]
The Return of the Psammead (1992) byHelen Cresswell concerns another family of Edwardian children who encounter the Psammead.[5]
Four Children and It (2012) byJacqueline Wilson is a contemporary retelling of the story in which four children from a modernstepfamily encounter the Psammead.[6] One of the children has read the original book and wishes to meet Cyril, Anthea, Jane and Robert.
InFive Children on the Western Front (2014) byKate Saunders, set nine years after the original story, the children encounter the horrors of theFirst World War.[7]
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Awizard named Psamathos Psamathide, described as a "Psamathist" (expert in sand) appears inJ. R. R. Tolkien'sRoverandom. The character, in an early draft, originally belonged to an order of "Psammeads".
Five Children and It public domain audiobook atLibriVox