The Enchanted Castle

The Enchanted CastleThe story concerns three children, two brothers (Gerald and Jimmy), and their sister, Cathy. They are on holiday, away from their parents (don't all the best adventures happen on these types of occasions?), and staying in Cathy's boarding school under the supervision of the French schoolmistress, who sits around looking wistful.To break the monotony of the boarding house, they decide to explore the local countryside and get hopelessly lost. They come across a hole in a hedge which leads to an underground passage, which itself leads them into a beautiful garden with an ornate castle at its centre.The garden is seemingly deserted, and the feeling of magic grows as they come to the entrance of a maze. Following a scarlet thread, which brings them to the maze's epicentre, they discover a sleeping princess, who Jimmy wakes up with a smacker on her cheek.After providing a feast for them in the castle (bread and cheese) the princess turns out not to be a princess after all, but a girl named Mabel. Nonetheless, she does possess a magic ring...'The Enchanted Castle' is a very episodic, with the children having different adventures in each chapter. What joins the chapters together to a unified whole is the enchanted ring. Through its powers, they can become invisible and make wishes.They help the local policeman catch a burglar, make the statues in the garden come alive, and help the French schoolteacher find her long lost love. The wishes they make also quite naturally get them into all sorts of scrapes, including getting the ring stuck on their finger, growing too tall in 'Alice in Wonderland' style, and making inanimate objects come alive into 'Uglie-Wuglies', more terrifying than it sounds.Throughout all this, Nesbit writes in her typically relaxed, natural style, and her characters, while not well-rounded, talk and act like real children. It is this inherent realism that makes the magical elements seem so real.The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults.Facts and Trivia: The Enchanted Castle was adapted into a TV-miniseries by the BBC in 1979. It has not been released on DVD or VHS in the UK, however, a DVD was released in Australia on 03/07/2013.