One minute book review: Five Children and It
In our C.S. Lewis reading group, we are currently working through “Surprised By Joy”, the spiritual autobiography of C.S. Lewis. In it, he mentioned some of the authors he loved as a child, one of which was E. Nesbit.
Edith Nesbit wrote many books, but a particularly popular trilogy was The Psammead Trilogy, the first of which was Five Children and It, where the children find a sand fairy who will grand them wishes. I read this book as a child and loved it (although I seem to recall loving the sequel even more) and I wanted to see if it still retained its charm for me as an adult.
Five Children and It is definitely still an enjoyable read as an adult. The language and society of the book has rather aged. There is one chapter where American Indians are portrayed and the dialogue isn’t exactly in line with present-day political correctness. Despite this, it’s easy to see why Lewis loved these books and how they fired his imagination, both as a child and as an adult.