Five Children and it

Five children find a cantankerous sand fairy in a gravel pit. Every day "It" will grant them a wish - which leads to disastrous and hilarious results. In the introduction, Sandra Kemp examines Nesbit's life and her reading, showing how she was poised between the Victorian world and a new era in which children in literature were no longer mere projections of the adult viewpoint. She also examines how the narrative is structured around the acting out of literary fantasies, which always come back down to earth. Nesbit combines implausible events with the prosaic and familiar, and Kemp illuminates her exploration of the shifting relationship between imagination, literature and life.