Five Children and It

Five Children and It is a children's novel by English author Edith Nesbit, first published in 1902; it was expanded from a series of stories published in the Strand Magazine in 1900 under the general title The Psammead, or the Gifts. It is the first of a trilogy. The book has never been out of print since its initial publication.

Plot summary
Like Nesbit's Railway Children, the story begins when a group of children move from London to the countryside of Kent. While playing in a gravel pit soon after the move, they uncover a rather grumpy, ugly and occasionally malevolent sand-fairy known as the Psammead who is compelled to grant one wish of theirs per day.

The children's wishes are:
 * Chapter I: To be as beautiful as the day. Because the servants then do not recognize them and shut them out of the house, subsequent wishes are all with the proviso that the house servants should not be able to perceive the results of the wish.
 * Chapter II: That the servants don't notice the changes their wishes make. To be rich beyond the dreams of avarice (refined to: That the gravel pit be full of gold pieces, specifically spade guineas).
 * Chapter III: That everyone would love the Lamb (the baby brother). This wish produces the result that various people attempt to kidnap the child.
 * Chapter IV: That the four older children would grow wings, and be able to fly.
 * Chapter VI: That their house would become a besieged castle. This wish was the result of Robert — the only one allowed out that day — wishing that the Psammead could give one of the others their wish without them needing to be there. Robert subsequently had to wish to be sent into the castle to be with the others.
 * Chapter VIII: That Robert would be bigger than the baker's boy. He becomes about eleven feet tall.
 * Chapter IX: That the misbehaving Lamb would "grow up". He becomes an unpleasant and condescending man, forcing them to resort to various measures to stay with him before he returns to normal.
 * Chapter X: That they would have an encounter with Red Indians.
 * Chapter XI: An assortment of simultaneous wishes relating to some stolen jewels, in return for a promise that they would never ask for another wish.

The effects of the wishes generally end at sundown.

Characters
The five children, brothers and sisters, are:
 * Cyril – known as Squirrel
 * Anthea – known as Panther
 * Robert – known as Bobs
 * Jane – known as Pussy
 * Hilary – their baby brother, known always as the Lamb.
 * "It" is the Psammead.

The Psammead
In Five Children and It, the Psammead is described as having “eyes [that] were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s” and whiskers like a rat. When it grants wishes it stretches out its eyes, holds its breath and swells alarmingly.

The five children find the Psammead in a gravel-pit, which used to be seashore. There were once many Psammeads but the others died because they got cold and wet. It is the only one of its kind left. It is thousands of years old and remembers pterodactyls and other ancient creatures. When the Psammeads were around, they granted any wishes, mostly for food. The wished-for objects would turn into stone at sunset if they were not used that day, but this doesn't apply to the children's wishes because what they wish for is so much more fantastic than the wishes the Psammead had granted in the past. (Chapter 1)

The name Psammead, (pronounced “Sammyadd” by the children in the story) appears to be an inventive Greek pun coined by Nesbit (from the Greek ψάμμος "sand" after the pattern of dryad, naiad, oread, etc.) upon the name of “Samyaza” the leader of the Grigori (“Watchers”, from Greek egrḗgoroi) supernatural creatures of antediluvian myth. Knowing the pun's in-joke shows the logic at work behind the creature's phobia of water — “nasty wet bubbling sea” — and why its eyes are placed watchfully upon the ends of long horns like a snail's eyes.

Sequels
The book's ending was clearly intended to leave readers in suspense:

"They did see it [the Psammead] again, of course, but not in this story. And it was not in a sand-pit either, but in a very, very, very different place. It was in a &mdash; But I must say no more."

The children reappeared in The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and then The Story of the Amulet (1906). The Psammead is off-stage in the first sequel (it is simply mentioned by the phoenix, who visits it three times to ask for a helpful wish when the situation becomes difficult) but plays a significant role in the second, when the children rescue it from a pet shop.

Some fifty years later, the premise of Five Children and It inspired the plot of Half Magic (1954) by the American author of children's books Edward Eager.

The Return of the Psammead by Helen Cresswell (1992) concerns another family of Edwardian children who visit the White House and discover the Psammead.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations


In 1991 the BBC turned the story into a six-part series. In the UK it was released under the story's original title; in the USA it was released as The Sand Fairy. This was followed by The Return of the Psammead in 1993, with the Psammead the only character linking the two series. Both series were scripted by Helen Cresswell, and Francis Wright puppeteered and voiced the Psammead.

A NHK/Tokyo Movie Shinsha production named Onegai! Samia Don was broadcast from 2 April 1985 to 4 February 1986 with a total of 78 episodes produced. An English version was never produced, but it came out in other languages, for example, being known in French as Sablotin.

A musical adaptation is in the early stages of development.

2004 film version
For more information, see Five Children and It (film)

A movie was released in 2004, starring Kenneth Branagh, Freddie Highmore, Zoë Wanamaker, Jonathan Bailey, and Norman Wisdom, with Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Psammead.