Five Children and It

“Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof.”

The author’s alliances are clear from the start of the story. She is not one of the silly grown-ups who thinks they know better than children and refuses to believe in magic. The book is populated with such grown-ups, and Nesbit repeatedly mines their disbelieving reactions to the children’s predicaments for humor. 

“It was not at all like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.”

The Psammead doesn’t just look peculiar but also doesn’t act like a fairy in a fairytale would. While it has the power to grant wishes, it is vain, grumpy, reluctant to be disturbed, and it is appalled at the children’s lack of sense in making their wishes. It symbolizes tradition and common sense in the novel, although as a magical creature, it stands apart from the story’s adults—who, with a few exceptions, are portrayed as dim-witted and lacking in imagination.

“Their faces were so radiantly beautiful as to be quite irritating to look at.”

The children’s first wish, to be “as beautiful as the day” (24), only gets them into trouble, teaching them their first lesson in The Difference Between Childish Whims and Genuine Needs. First, the children find each other’s beauty to be so stereotypical that it is annoying. They compare each other to Christmas card pictures, a “young chorister” who is likely to die young, and an organ grinder. Second, the servants don’t recognize the children and refuse to give them their dinner, the mid-day meal. This wish leads to the children’s request to the Psammead for the servants not to notice the effects of its magic.

“The children who were as beautiful as the day […] kept us there until sunset. We couldn’t come back till they’d gone.”

This dialogue of Anthea’s is one of many times when the children avoid lying by telling a half-truth to an adult. The siblings couldn’t come back to the house while they were transformed into the children who were as beautiful as the day. It is an example of their personal sense of justice, developing the theme of The Relativity of Justice and Moral Codes. Since they know that the magic is real but the adults won’t believe in it, they find a way to tell the truth without revealing the existence of the magic. 

“We’ll make up our minds, solid before we go, what it is we do want, and no one must ask for anything unless the others agree first.”

The children are fiercely loyal to each other and try to be fair to each other, as Cyril means to do with this suggestion. While they frequently make thoughtless wishes or simply fail to take turns, they always support each other in dealing with the consequences of their wishes, demonstrating The Importance of Responsibility When Using Power.

“You’ve no idea what it’s like […] it’s like stones on you—or chains.”

Anthea literally feels the weight of the golden coins that the Psammead produces for the children after Robert tries to bury her in them. As a socialist, Nesbit believed in ideals such as people’s rights to education, housing, employment, and healthcare. She was against capitalism and so would have scorned the acquisition of wealth for wealth’s sake.

“And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat. […] The fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible.”

Nesbit frequently uses similes in her descriptions. For instance, she compares London to a prison and describes the gravel pit as looking like a giant’s wash-hand basin. Here, she combines simile with personification, attributing the ability to stand on one’s head to a law of nature and comparing the process of spending the fairy money to the upside-down law.

“The thing that troubled them the most was the fear that the old gentleman’s guinea might have disappeared at sunset with the rest.”

The old gentleman is the only adult who willingly accepts one of the old-fashioned spade guineas that the Sand-fairy gives the children as payment. In an instance of their complicated personal sense of justice, the children make a point of going to see him the next day to make sure that the coin has not disappeared at sunset like the rest of the gold does. The handful of adults who are willing to believe that the children are good at heart—who also include the vicar and his wife, the gamekeeper, and Martha—are portrayed by the author in a far more favorable light than most of the adults in the book.

“For now they had had two wishes, Beauty and Wealth, and neither had exactly made them happy.”

The novel’s major theme is that of the importance of responsibility when using power. The children’s first two wishes are made without forethought and so do not make them happy. The first two wishes are also based on clichés, one of the story’s motifs. Similar to the computing motto of “garbage in, garbage out,” poor quality and lazy thinking in wish making will result in poor quality in wish granting.

“How I do wish we could wish something really sensible.”

The children often reflect on the fact that they are not very good at making wishes. They say several times that £50 in two-shilling pieces would be a very sensible wish, yet they never get around to asking for it. They become distracted by their moods or simply make a wish, forgetting that it is going to be granted. The tension between their awareness of their shortcomings and their tendency to fall short of their lofty goals creates the drama and humor in the novel. 

“Stealing is stealing even if you’ve got wings.”

During the flying adventure in Chapter 4, the children twice take food that doesn’t belong to them and then argue about whether or not the theft is justified. Cyril maintains that “stealing is stealing,” to which Jane says that their wings make them like birds; Anthea settles the question by giving the farmer a coin. Their moral fluidity—or lack of an absolute set of standards—here and in the adventure where they steal from the vicar’s larder are characteristic of the relativity of justice and moral codes. 

“Perhaps the winged children really did do one good thing that day.”

The “one good thing” the children do is astonishing the farmer who owns the stolen plums such that he is nice to his wife, who in turn is nice to him. The author’s observation stresses the fact that the children’s adventures most often result in a series of bad things happening, most of which can only be resolved by the coming of sunset.

“Whether anyone cried or not, there was certainly an interval during which none of the party was quite itself.”

Tears are a sign of weakness among the children, allowable only in the two youngest, the Lamb and Jane, whom Anthea is frequently called upon to comfort. The three older children are held to a sort of British schoolboy’s code of honor involving tightly controlling one’s emotions. For this reason, the author will not say whether or not the older children cry after finding themselves stranded in the church tower. 

“‘No,’ answered Jane suddenly; ‘it’s all true, but it’s not the whole truth. We can’t tell you that. It’s no good asking. Oh, do forgive us and take us home!’”

Jane, being one of the younger children, is apt to try to tell adults about the Psammead. In the encounter with the vicar and his wife, however, she realizes that there is no point in telling them about the creature. Her “sudden” outburst is partly in defense of Cyril, who has just admitted to raiding the vicarage kitchen, and partly because she is exhausted and wants to go home.

“You know grown-up people often say they do not like to punish you, and that they only do it for your own good, and that it hurts them as much as it hurts you.”

Nesbit, in one of her editorial asides, explains how Martha can both care for the children and punish them in order to teach them a lesson. Martha is the most consistent adult presence in the novel and is also the most complex of the adult characters. She is torn between genuine affection for the children, especially the Lamb, and conscientiousness about her duty toward them. Martha will be elevated from her domestic status at the end of the novel by her impending marriage to the vicar’s gamekeeper, Beale. 

“A ripping—I mean a jolly—no, we were contented with our lot—that’s what I mean; only, after that we got into an awful fix.”

One way in which Nesbit distinguished herself from her predecessors in the realm of children’s fantasy—in addition to the “everyday” setting—was her use of slang. The children frequently use expressions such as “Crikey!” and “right, oh!” In Chapter 6, when Robert encounters the soldiers and leader of the besieging army, his slang is a particular challenge to his medieval-era opponents and contributes to the chapter’s humor.

“Oh, I’ll be a soldier when I grow up—you just see if I don’t.”

Robert, who has mostly contributed mayhem to the adventures up to this point, proves his soldier-like bravery when Cyril wishes that the house would become a besieged castle. Robert gets his wish to be a soldier in a modern sequel to the trilogy, Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders (2016), in which both of the older boys fight in World War I. The story, centered around the Lamb, is set 10 years after the end of the last book in the series, The Story of the Amulet. It is a tribute to the enduring power of the “Five Children” series characters.

“‘We’ve had things happening,’ said Robert; ‘that’s always something.’”

Robert points out that although their wishes have not benefited the children up to this point in the story, at least interesting things have happened to them. This sentence could stand alone to summarize the plot. Although the children constantly lament their ill luck in not gaining more from their adventures, the episodes are, in many ways, entertaining to the children. In addition, they often serve to strengthen the bonds among the siblings.

“But, after all, it was quite right that he should be taught that English boys mustn’t use their feet when they fight, but their fists.”

The author frequently breaks into the story to offer her first-person opinions on various topics. This technique risks having the effect of delivering a mini sermon, but Nesbit uses humor and works to establish a rapport with young readers to temper the effect.

“It’ll only end in your wishing for something you don’t really want. […] It’s always been the same ever since people left off eating really wholesome things.”

When the Psammead recalls the days of its ancient past, it stresses that a “sensible” child’s wish would be for something large that their family could eat. Its examples include Megatheriums, or giant sloths, along with Plesiosaurs and Pterodactyls. The latter two examples are absurd because the animals went extinct about 66 million years ago, long before humans walked the earth.

“Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.”

Cyril, more than any of the other children, dislikes dishonesty. However, he is being dishonest with himself here; he knows that he made a wish that will get them all into trouble, and he is trying hard to convince himself that nothing will happen as a result. With the personal sense of justice that he shares with all his siblings, he knows that he is kidding himself.

“I am very sorry to say that Anthea’s first words were very like a girl.”

The author makes this observation when Anthea tells Cyril, “I told you so” (that the Indigenous Americans would soon be at the house). Being “like a girl” is equated with weakness, as when Anthea tells Jane to “man up” as a way of getting her to stop crying. Nesbit herself, though unconventional in many ways, was not a feminist.

“Don’t cry, silly! We’ll stand by you. Father says we need never be afraid if we don’t do anything wrong and always speak the truth.”

These sentences of Robert’s reveal several facets of the children’s unique code of honor. First, while they often squabble, they always stand by each other when there is trouble. Second, they often do things that are wrong, chiefly stealing, but they also always speak the truth. Honesty and fairness, not following the law, rule their behavior.