Five Children and It (Annotated)

Description

In a tale reminiscent of Nesbit’s « The Railway Children, » a group of five children, Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, find themselves relocating from bustling London to the serene countryside of Kent. Their ordinary exploration of a gravel pit leads to an extraordinary discovery—a cantankerous sand-fairy called the Psammead. This peculiar creature, capable of granting wishes, has a condition: the children can make one wish per day to share among themselves, but the wishes will turn to stone by sundown.

However, the wishes take unexpected and often humorous turns. A wish to be beautiful results in the servants not recognizing the children. A desire for wealth fills their pit with obsolete gold coins, rendering them unable to buy anything. Wishing for wings lands them stranded atop a church tower. Even a wish for size turns Robert into an eleven-foot-tall spectacle.

The infant brother, the Lamb, isn’t spared from the mishaps either. The children’s wish for someone to care for the baby leads to chaos as everyone wants him. Another wish causes the baby to grow rapidly into a selfish young man, leaving the siblings behind.

In a series of misadventures, the children nearly face peril when they wish to meet real Red Indians and inadvertently draw trouble. As circumstances escalate due to a misplaced wish for a wealthy woman’s jewelry, the children turn to the Psammead for an intricate set of wishes to rectify the chaos. The Psammead agrees to help but on the condition that they never ask for another wish.

In the end, they plead for a final wish to ensure they meet the Psammead again. The sand-fairy grants this request, promising a reunion. The story is a delightful account of the unpredictable and often amusing consequences of the children’s wishes and their eventual resolution of the chaos they’ve caused.