Five children find a cantankerous sand fairy in a gravel pit. Every day "It" will grant them a wish - which leads to disastrous and hilarious results. In the introduction, Sandra Kemp examines Nesbit's life and her reading, showing how she was poised between the Victorian world and a new era in which children in literature were no longer mere projections of the adult viewpoint. She also examines how the narrative is structured around the acting out of literary fantasies, which always come back down to earth. Nesbit combines implausible events with the prosaic and familiar, and Kemp illuminates her exploration of the shifting relationship between imagination, literature and life.
This book features in the following series: World's Classics, Worlds Classics .
This book is aimed at children in university.
There are 216 pages in this book. This book was published 1994 by Oxford University Press .
Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet who published over 60 books of fiction for children under her pen name E. Nesbit.
This book contains the following story:
Five Children and it
'Don't you know a sand-fairy when you see one?'. I dare say you have often thought about what you would do if you were granted three wishes. The five children - Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane and their baby brother - had often talked about it but when they are faced with the grumpy sand-fairy they find it difficult to make up their minds. And that is just the beginning of their dilemmas. As they discover, there is nothing quite like a wish for getting you into terrible trouble.
