FIVE CHILDREN AND IT The Five Children Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and Hilary the baby go to the country, they decide to go digging in a sand pit. There they find a furry creature with two horns on its head holding its eyes. The creature is the Psammead, a grumpy sand-fairy, the last of his kind, who grants a wish a day. Soon they find their wishes never seem to turn out right and often have unexpected consequences. The Five Children and IT offers a generous amount of fantasy, humor, and adventure, as the children are repeatedly subject to wishes gone comically wrong.

Twenty stories from the plays of William Shakespeare (as well as a simple biography of his life) are retold in this volume, first published in 1907. Nesbit does a wonderful job of transforming these old classic plots into forms that can be understood and enjoyed by children.

"That going to the seaside was the very beginning of everything, - only it seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end, like the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like paths, and then turn into sheep-tracks, and then are just grass and furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk." "That going to the seaside was the very beginning of everything, - only it seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end, like the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like paths, and then turn into sheep-tracks, and then are just grass and furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk." In Nesbit's 1913 novel, "Wet Magic," the children of the Desmond family -- Francis, Mavis, Bernard and Kathleen -- are looking forward to a holiday by the sea. They get more of an adventure than they had planned on, though, when they accidentally summon a mermaid. And when that mermaid is captured and put on display at a local circus, they decide they must rescue her. As their reward, they are permitted to visit the hidden kingdom of the mer-people, but find they must now stop a war to save their new friends.

"Hardling's Luck" is a sequel to "The House of Arden," a great favorite of Nesbit fans; it's a story of injustice, poverty, deformity, magic, romance, suspense, sacrifice, and triumph over adversity that comes to its point with a fateful twist. . . .

E. Nesbit, the celebrated English children s author, retells Shakespeare s most famous plays in an accessible and entertaining fashion. Originally styled A Home Study Course, this collection of twenty stories was intended to introduce young children to the plays of Shakespeare. It is written in a style that is both engaging and easily understood, and Nesbit s admiration for the original works is apparent throughout. Whether you are learning about Shakespeare for the first time or seeking to refresh your memory, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare is a highly enjoyable book.

Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can't stand them all over the shop-eh, what?' These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling hi

There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a white house, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day they had the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes were on long horns like snail's eyes,

They were not railway children to begin with. I don't suppose they had ever thought about railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne and Cook's, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's. They were just ordinary suburban children, an

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast-Robert's, I fancy-as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration. 'They were jolly cheap, ' said whoever it was, and I think it

No. The chemises aren't cut out. I haven't had time. There are enough shirts to go on with, aren't there, Mrs. James? said Betty. "We can make do for this afternoon, Miss, but the men they're getting blowed out with shirts. It's the children's shifts

The sequel to Five Children and It follows the wondrous adventures of Robert, Jane, Cyril, Anthea, and The Lamb as they discover a clever phoenix and a magic carpet. The children find an egg in the carpet, which hatches into a talking Phoenix. The Phoenix explains that the carpet is a magic one that will grant them three wishes a day. The children are on a fantastic ride with the hopelessly vain but good-hearted phoenix and his flying carpet. They travel to a French castle, to a tropical island, foil a burglar, arrange a marriage, change people's disposition, and have to figure out how to get 199 Persian cats, 398 muskrats, a cow, and a policeman out of their house. Their charming adventures not only entertain but teach them, and the reader, a few gentle lessons." The Phoenix and the Carpet" is a wonderful book for the young and the young at heart. The adventures are continued and concluded in the third book of the trilogy, "The Story of the Amulet"

There were three of them Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerry's name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmy's name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her name at all, but Cathy, or Catty, or Puss Cat, when her bro

MY cousin Sarah and me had only one aunt between us, and that was my Aunt Maria, who lived in the little cottage up by the church. Now my aunt had a tidy little bit of money laid by, which she couldn't in reason expect to carry with her when her time

The five children find a cantankerous sand fairy or 'psammead' in a gravel pit. Every day 'It' will grant each of them a wish that lasts until sunset, often with disastrous consequences. Five Children and It was first published in 1902, and it has remained in print ever since. The Introduction to this edition 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. Sandra Kemp examines how the narrative is structured around the acting out of literary fantasies, which always come down to earth. Nesbit combines wonderfully implausible events with the prosaic and familiar, and Kemp illuminates her exploration of the shifting relationship between imagination, literature, and life.