Five Children and It

A children's story created by British writer E. Nesbit. It was first released as a book in 1902, further expanded from a series of stories appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1900 with the original title The Psammead, or the Gifts. It is the first of a trilogy that covers The Phoenix and the Carpet in 1904 and The Story of the Amulet in 1906. The children’s book has been a sensational hit since its first release. The story tells of a group of children going from London to the countryside of Kent. The five children are Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and Lamb, their baby brother. They are playing in a sand quarry when they found a cranky, nasty, and seldom wicked Psammead or sand fairy, who can fulfill any wishes. He convinces the children to take one wish every day for all of them, with a warning that the wishes will be made into stone at sunset. This, outwardly, was once a rule in the Stone Age, when all the young ones wanted was food and the bones of those food become fossils. The five children’s first wish is to be as beautiful as the day time. As a rule, the wish ceases at sunset, making the Psammead to see that most wishes are whimsical to be turned into stone. All of the wishes go comically wrong. As the children wish to be beautiful, the servants hardly knew them and were left out of their own house. Their wishes created them troubles like none of them were gratifying. Edith Nesbit was an English writer and poet. She wrote her children’s books with the name of E. Nesbit. She authored or collaborated on over 60 children’s books. She was also a political activist and a co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later associated to the Labour Party.