Five Children and It facts for kids
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First edition
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| Author | Edith Nesbit |
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| Illustrator | H. R. Millar |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Psammead Trilogy |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | T. Fisher Unwin |
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Publication date
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1902 |
| Media type | |
| OCLC | 4378896 |
| Followed by | The Phoenix and the Carpet |
Five Children and It is a classic children's novel written by English author E. Nesbit. It first appeared in a magazine called Strand Magazine in 1902, with parts of the story coming out each month. Later that year, these stories were put together and made into a full book. This book is the first part of a three-book series, followed by The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906). It has been so popular that it has always been available to read since it was first published!
Contents
What the Story is About
Just like Nesbit's other famous book, The Railway Children, this story starts with a family moving from London to the countryside in Kent. The five children – Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother, who they call the Lamb – are playing in a gravel pit. There, they dig up a very old, grumpy, and sometimes a bit mean sand-fairy called a Psammead.
The Psammead can grant wishes! But there's a catch: the wishes only last until sunset. When the sun goes down, whatever they wished for turns back to normal. The Psammead explains that this rule comes from the Stone Age, when people mostly wished for food, and any uneaten food would turn to stone.
The children's wishes almost always go wrong in funny ways:
- Their first wish is to be "as beautiful as the day." But then, the house servants don't recognize them and lock them out of their own home! At sunset, they go back to normal.
- They wish to be rich, and suddenly their gravel pit is full of old gold coins called spade guineas. But these coins are no longer used, so they can't buy anything with them.
- Wishing for wings seems fun, but when the sun sets, they find themselves stuck on top of a church bell tower! They have to be rescued by the gamekeeper. This wish does have a good side effect: the gamekeeper later marries their housemaid!
- When Robert gets picked on by the baker's boy, he wishes he was bigger. Suddenly, he grows to be eleven feet tall! The other children decide to show him off at a traveling fair to earn money.
- They also wish themselves into a castle, only to find out it's being attacked!
The baby, the Lamb, also gets into trouble because of two wishes:
- The children get tired of looking after the baby and wish that someone else wanted him. This leads to everyone wanting to take the baby, and the children have to protect him from kidnappers and travelers.
- Later, they wish the baby would grow up faster. He instantly turns into a selfish, grown-up young man who leaves them behind!
Finally, the children accidentally wish that a rich woman's expensive jewelry would appear in their home and belong to their mother. It looks like the gamekeeper, who is now their friend, will be blamed for stealing. The children have to beg the Psammead for a complicated series of wishes to fix everything. The Psammead agrees, but only if they promise never to ask for another wish. Only Anthea, who has become fond of the Psammead, makes one last wish: that they will meet it again. The Psammead promises this wish will come true.
Main Characters
The story features five brothers and sisters:
- Cyril, also called Squirrel: He is the oldest child. He is brave, good at solving problems, and very smart from reading books.
- Anthea, also called Panther: She is the second oldest. She is kind, sensible, and has a good heart.
- Robert, also called Bobs: He is the middle child. He loves playing jokes and can get angry quickly.
- Jane, also called Pussy: She is usually a sweet little girl, but she can be very sensitive, sometimes cries easily, and gets scared.
- Hilary, the baby, known as the Lamb: They call him the Lamb because his first word was "baa." He is too young to have a strong personality.
- "It" is the Psammead: This is a grumpy, very old, sand-fairy who grants wishes. Even though it causes trouble for the children, it grows to like them.
About the Psammead
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 has "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 are also furry, and it has "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 up in a surprising way.
The five children discover the Psammead in a gravel pit, which used to be a seashore long ago. There used to be many Psammeads, but the others died because they got cold and wet. This one is the only one left. It is thousands of years old and remembers ancient creatures like pterodactyls. When Psammeads were common, they mostly granted wishes for food. The things wished for would turn to stone at sunset if they weren't used that day. However, this rule doesn't quite apply to the children's wishes because what they wish for is much more unusual than the simple food wishes of the past.
The name "Psammead" is pronounced "sammyadd" by the children in the story. It seems to be a name made up by E. Nesbit from the Greek word "psammos," which means "sand." It's like how "dryad" means a tree-nymph. But unlike the beautiful Greek nymphs, the Psammead has a rather strange appearance!
What Happens Next: The Sequels
The end of Five Children and It leaves readers wondering what will happen:
"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 appear again in the next two books of the series:
- The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904): The Psammead isn't directly in this story, but another magical creature, the Phoenix, mentions visiting it to ask for helpful wishes when the children are in trouble.
- The Story of the Amulet (1906): The Psammead plays a big part in this book after the children rescue it from a pet shop.
Other authors have also written stories inspired by Five Children and It:
- Half Magic (1954) by Edward Eager: An American author was inspired by the idea of wishes going wrong.
- The Return of the Psammead (1992) by Helen Cresswell: This book is about another family of children in the Edwardian era who find the Psammead.
- Four Children and It (2012) by Jacqueline Wilson: This is a modern version of the story where four children from a new stepfamily meet the Psammead. One of the children has read the original book and wishes to meet Cyril, Anthea, Jane, and Robert.
- Five Children on the Western Front (2014) by Kate Saunders: Set nine years after the original story, this book shows the five children dealing with the terrible events of the First World War.
TV Shows and Movies
Five Children and It has been made into TV shows and movies several times:
- In 1985–86, a Japanese anime cartoon called Onegai! Samia-don was shown. It had 78 episodes.
- In 1991, the BBC made the story into a six-part TV series. It was called The Sand Fairy in the USA. This was followed by The Return of the Psammead in 1993, which featured the Psammead as the only character connecting the two series.
- In 2004, a movie version was released. It starred actors like Freddie Highmore and Kenneth Branagh, with Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Psammead.
- A stage musical was created by Timothy Knapman and Philip Godfrey in 2016.
- In 2018, The Psammy Show was an animated series co-produced by DQ Entertainment, Method Animation, and Disney Germany.
- The story was also turned into a comic strip by Henry Seabright.
See also
In Spanish: Cinco niños y esto para niños
