Five Children and It

by E. Nesbit

Category: Children's Literature

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Five Children and It" by E. Nesbit is a fantasy children's novel published in 1902. When five siblings discover a grumpy, ancient sand-fairy called the Psammead in a gravel pit, they're granted one wish per day—but there's a catch. Each wish vanishes at sunset, and every desire goes hilariously and dangerously wrong. From unrecognizable beauty to unwanted riches, from inconvenient wings to a besieged castle, the children learn that getting what you wish for isn't always what you want. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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Preview

FIVE CHILDREN AND IT

E. NESBIT

TO JOHN BLAND

My Lamb, you are so very small, You have not learned to read at all. Yet never a printed book withstands The urgence of your dimpled hands. So, though this book is for yourself, Let mother keep it on the shelf Till you can read. O days that Pass, That day will come too soon, alas!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY

The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we nearly there?' And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, 'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the

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About This Edition

This edition of Five Children and It by E. Nesbit is catalogued on Libreya under Children's Literature and runs approximately 53,600 words — about 268 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Children's Literature

The greatest works written for children are not lesser literature — they are a distinct literary achievement, requiring unusual economy of language, imaginative vividness, and an ability to speak truthfully to readers who have not yet learned to accept the compromises that adults make with reality. The classics of children's literature in the public domain represent the founding works of the genre: Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which invented literary nonsense and remains one of the most philosophically rich books in the English language; J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, which made the refusal to grow up into a genuine tragic theme; L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which created an entire American mythological landscape; and dozens of others that have shaped the imaginative lives of readers across generations. These books work on multiple levels simultaneously — they delight children with vivid characters and fast-moving plots while offering adults something richer and stranger on re-reading. That capacity to mean different things at different ages is the hallmark of the truly enduring work.