| Five Children and It | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Edith Nesbit |
| Illustrator | H. R. Millar |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Psammead Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Children's Novel |
| Publisher | T. Fisher Unwin |
| Publication date | 1902 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| OCLC Number | 4378896 |
| Followed by | The Phoenix and the Carpet |
Five Children and It is a children's novel by English author Edith Nesbit, first published in 1902; it was expanded from a series of stories published in the Strand Magazine in 1900 under the general title The Psammead, or the Gifts. It is the first of a trilogy. The book has never been out of print since its initial publication.
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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, the five children – Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb – 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 effects of each wish lasts until sundown.
All the wishes granted to the children go comically wrong. When they wish to be beautiful, the servants don't recognise them and shut them out of the house. When they wish to be rich, they find themselves with a stack of gold coins that nobody will take, so they can't buy anything. When they wish for wings, they have fun flying, but then at sunset they find themselves stuck on a tall tower. When they wish that their baby brother was older, he turns into a grown-up and starts bossing them about. When Robert wishes he was bigger than the baker's boy (who has been nasty to him) he becomes eleven feet tall. They also find themselves in a castle being besieged by knights, and in a Red Indian encampment. finally, they need the Psammead's help to recover some stolen jewellery, and he agrees to help provided they don't ask for any more wishes.
The five children, brothers and sisters, are:
In Five Children and It, the Psammead is described as having “eyes [that] were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and 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. When it grants wishes it stretches out its eyes, holds its breath and swells alarmingly.
The five children find the Psammead in a gravel-pit, which used to be seashore. There were once many Psammeads but the others died because they got cold and wet. It is the only one of its kind left. It is thousands of years old and remembers pterodactyls and other ancient creatures. When the Psammeads were around, they granted any wishes, mostly for food. The wished-for objects would turn into stone at sunset if they were not used that day, but this doesn't apply to the children's wishes because what they wish for is so much more fantastic than the wishes the Psammead had granted in the past. [1] (Chapter 1)
The name Psammead, (pronounced “Sammyadd” by the children in the story) appears to be an inventive Greek pun coined by Nesbit (from the Greek ψάμμος "sand" after the pattern of dryad, naiad, oread, etc.) upon the name of “Samyaza” the leader of the Grigori (“Watchers”, from Greek egrḗgoroi) supernatural creatures of antediluvian myth. Knowing the pun's in-joke shows the logic at work behind the creature's phobia of water — “nasty wet bubbling sea” — and why its eyes are placed watchfully upon the ends of long horns like a snail's eyes.
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."
The children reappeared in The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and then The Story of the Amulet (1906). The Psammead is off-stage in the first sequel (it is simply mentioned by the phoenix, who visits it three times to ask for a helpful wish when the situation becomes difficult) but plays a significant role in the second, when the children rescue it from a pet shop.
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.
The Return of the Psammead by Helen Cresswell (1992) concerns another family of Edwardian children who visit the White House and discover the Psammead.
Five Children and It has been adapted for television and film several times:
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