KidLit Forum

This story is about five children that moved from London to the countryside of Rochester. There they've encountered a Psammead that makes them come true a wish per day. So children have their wish almost every day but each time they get into trouble because there is nothing useful in the wish they've made. This way they wish to be "beautiful as the day" and they get to starve because Martha didn't recognize them; they wish for money but this leads them to the police and considered as thieves; they wish for wings, and get to be punished for being late for dinner; they wish for a castle and get to fight with indians; they wish to be bigger and get to the circus; they wish for Baby to be wanted so that they won't be disturbed by him and get to spend the whole day keeping Baby away from those who want him; they wish for someone else's jewelries for their mother and get to have one wish after another to solve the problem, in exchange of never disturbing the Psammead again. But what was actually a good thing is the fact that all the wishes vanish at the end of the day and all their problems disappear. An interesting fact in this story is that all the children get to be the hero of the day.

Although there are weeks since we've read this story, every evening I invent a new story with the children and the strange creature that makes their wishes come true, for my boy, who enjoyed it from the first time. Of course I haven't told him the ending yet...

This story underlines human greed. Surprisingly children manifest it in various ways.Psammead could be the incarnation of the devil if we look at the story from a religious perspective. More desires they have more addicted they became. For the moment they enjoy the game eventually getting tired for the risks they were exposed to.The fantasy consists in the presence of supernatural chracter. It as the references recommends Psammead in the title of the book might signify from the start the greed. It as a third personal pronoun refers to objects and inanimate things. The desire for something hardly to get represents the pursuit for perfection. Children didn`t surpass their initial condition and feel the need to compensate. The children desire for growing faster suggests the Imperfect world they live in.All the adventures and the supernatural intrusion make them accept the realiy of their world after learning a precious lesson in the hard way.

The book ''Five Children and It " depicts a wonderful experience of a few characters, namely Jane, Anthea, Robert, Cyril and the little one called Lamb far away from London which " is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.Of course there are the shops and theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook’s,1 and things, but if your people are rather poor you don’t get taken to the theatres, and you can’t buy things out of the shops; and London has none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or themselves—such as trees and sand and woods and waters".
As we can see , there are underlined some aspects related to the social and economical situation of that period. There seems to be a great discrepancy between poor and rich people. However, the most important part of the story begins when those children meet a fairy who grants them some wishes ,( looking good, having money and others) that last only as long as the sun is visible, often with disastrous consequences. So, from this story we learn that what we wish we might finally get it .(Maria Bondea)

Some Magic elements in "5 children and I":

- the gypsy gives the baby a blessing/spell - “The gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead, as if she had been writing something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his feet; then she said: ‘May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the strong hands to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own,’ Then she said something in a strange language no one could understand…”
- “It” is a “Psammead,” or a “sand fairy,” who grants wishes.
- The house they were staying in “seemed a sort of fairy palace.”
- Anthea mentions that the servants have dreams out of the Dream-book, “like snakes and oysters and going to a wedding – that means a funeral, and snakes are a false female friend, and oysters are babies.”