Five Children and It
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| Author | Edith Nesbit |
|---|---|
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Psammead Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Children's Novel |
| Publisher | T. Fisher Unwin |
| Released | 1902 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | The Phoenix and the Carpet |
Five Children and It is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1902. It is the first of a trilogy.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Like Nesbit's Railway Children, the story begins when a group of children move from London to the countryside of Kent. While playing in a gravel pit soon after the move, they uncover a rather grumpy, ugly and occasionally malevolent sand-fairy known as the Psammead who is compelled to grant one wish of theirs per day. (The name Psammead appears to be a coinage of Nesbit's, from the Greek ψάμμος "sand" after the pattern of dryad, naiad, oread, etc.).
The children's wishes are:
- To be as beautiful as the day. Because of problems discovered immediately afterwards, subsequent wishes are all with the proviso that the house servants should not be able to perceive the results of the wish.
- To be rich beyond the dreams of avarice (refined to: That the gravel pit be full of gold pieces, specifically spade guineas.)
- That everyone would love the Lamb (one of the children). This wish produces the result that various people attempt to kidnap the child.
- That the four older children would grow wings, and be able to fly.
- That their house would become a castle under siege by knights.
- That Robert would be bigger than the baker's boy. He becomes about eleven feet tall.
- That the misbehaving Lamb would "grow up". He becomes an unpleasant and condescending man.
- That they would have an encounter with Red Indians.
- An assortment of simultaneous wishes relating to some stolen jewels, in return for a promise that they would never ask for another wish.
Almost all effects of wishes end at sundown.
[edit] Characters in "Five Children and It"
The five children, brothers and sisters, are:
- Cyril – known as Squirrel
- Anthea – known as Panther
- Robert – known as Bobs
- Jane – known as Pussy
- Hilary – their baby brother, known always as the Lamb.
- "It" is the Psammead.
[edit] The Psammead
In Five Children and It, the Psammead is described as having “eyes [that] were on long horn like a snail’s eyes, and it could move it in and out like telescopes; it had ears like 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 had whiskers like a rat (chapter one).
Origin: The five children are digging a hole and find the Psammead in a quarry. The quarry is buried in the sea thousands of years ago. When the children find the Psammead sleeping they wake him up and he is very grumpy. If the Psammead gets wet and cold it will die. The other Psammeads died because they got cold and wet and he’s the only one of his kind left. When the Psammeads were around, they granted any wish but mostly he granted wishes for food for the families. However, the wishes would turn into stone at sunset if they were not used that day.
[edit] Sequels
The book was clearly originally intended to leave readers in suspense: it ends
"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."
The story was continued in The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and then The Story of the Amulet (1906), in both of which the same characters reappeared.
Some fifty years later, the premise of Five Children and It inspired the plot of Half Magic (1954) by the American author of children's books Edward Eager.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In 1991 the BBC turned the story into a six-part series. In the UK it was released under the story's original title; in the USA it was released as The Sand Fairy. This was followed by The Return of the Psammead in 1993 (from a 1992 story by Helen Cresswell, with the Psammead the only character linking the two series.
A movie was released in 2004, starring Kenneth Branagh, Freddie Highmore, Zoë Wanamaker, Jonathan Bailey, and Norman Wisdom, with Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Psammead (the role was originally offered to Robin Williams). There are some differences between the film and the book: the movie is based on the children's father going to war and their mother looking after wounded soldiers as a nurse. As a result the children end up staying at their uncle's house, where they meet the sand-fairy. The movie got great reviews, although people who read the book were disappointed because of the huge changes from the book to the movie.
A NHK/Tokyo Movie Shinsha production named Onegai! Samia Don was broadcast from 2 April 1985 to 4 February 1986 with a total of 78 episodes produced. An English version was never produced, but it came out in other languages, for example, being known in French as "Sablotin."
[edit] External links
- Five Children and It, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Text of Five Children and It
- Free audiobook from LibriVox
- The 1991 TV movie
- The 2004 film
- New York, 1905 edition (scanned page images from the Library of Congress)
- The 1985-86 anime Onegai! Samia Don, Samed el duende mágico
- The Return of the Psammead 1993 sequel to Five Children and It
