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Heaven: 2021 August Book Discussion: The Story of the Amulet

SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
edited August 2022 in Limbo
August's book is The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit. This book is the third in her trilogy about five children and their magical adventures, first with a Psammead (a sand fairy) and then with a Phoenix, but can be read without reference to the two other books. It's easily available on the internet, libraries and book shops.
I'll post some questions on the 20th.

Comments

  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I have in the last few weeks reread the whole trilogy and am looking forward to the discussion. :smile:
  • Likewise
  • I love the Psammead, although my daughter hated the books. I'll investigate.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    E. Nesbit was my favourite author as a child, and I've re-read the books loads of times. I'm looking forward to re-reading The Story of the Amulet again.

    If you know nothing about Edith Nesbit, the wikipedia article gives a basic outline. She lived a colourful life to say the least.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    I love that book! I think that I will reread it and join the fun. :smiley: It was my favorite of the three psammead books. I also loved The Enchanted Castle also by E. Nesbit.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Lyda wrote: »
    I love that book! I think that I will reread it and join the fun. :smiley: It was my favorite of the three psammead books.
    It was my favourite of the three as well, so much so that my childhood copy fell to bits, was mended with lots of sellotape and somewhere along the line was discarded. I've had to invest in a new one. The first one I ordered, online, arrived and had clearly been printed from some ebook format, so in place of the illustrations it had "[image missing]" throughout. I sent it back and made sure the one I replaced it with had the right illustrations.

    It's surprising to find how important the illustrations of a childhood book are. I bought a set of the Narnia books for my children and they have the original line drawings coloured - by the original artist, but they still don't sit right with me. I'm gradually collecting a set with the black and white line drawings, for my own satisfaction.

    Similarly, I have several versions of "The Just So Stories" with different illustrations, but the one with the author's own is, for me, The One True Version.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    The Story of the Amulet was my favourite too, hence choosing it as this month's book. I've only read one adult Nesbit novel, The Lark. It was fun, but totally ran out of steam at the end. Anyone else read her adult stuff?
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I don't think I've read her adult stuff, but I remember borrowing a very old and huge library book of her short stories when I was a little kid, and they were quite disturbing. They seemed to be cautionary tales aimed at kids, but really quite dark. One still stays with me as quite horrific, about a little boy who had a mischievous habit of telling fibs, or exaggerating, and then some magic is agreed for his fibs to come true, which I think he actually wants, but then he unthinkingly claims that his sister (who's sick with a cold or something) is dying, and then she really is, and he's horrified and upset. I mean, I enjoyed fun cautionary poems, like 'Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies,' but Nesbit's cautionary stories were a bit too believable and realistic to be fun! I'm curious if others have read these.

    There was another short story she wrote, which was in my 'Stories for 8 Year Olds' book (anyone else get these books for each birthday as a kid? Stories for 7 Year Olds, Stories for 8 Year Olds, etc), about a princess who had a curse on her that made her bald, and then this was put right by a different spell that made her hair grow, but it includes the caveat that the hair growth doubles whenever it's cut, so her hair is growing uncontrollably, though they find a way to fix it at the end - I quite liked that one!
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    fineline wrote: »
    There was another short story she wrote, which was in my 'Stories for 8 Year Olds' book (anyone else get these books for each birthday as a kid? Stories for 7 Year Olds, Stories for 8 Year Olds, etc), about a princess who had a curse on her that made her bald, and then this was put right by a different spell that made her hair grow, but it includes the caveat that the hair growth doubles whenever it's cut, so her hair is growing uncontrollably, though they find a way to fix it at the end - I quite liked that one!
    I remember that one! :smiley: I have it in a compilation called "A Book of Princesses"! I'll reread it.

    I haven't read any of her adult stuff or, I think, her cautionary tales. Much as I love (and loved) what I've read of hers there's something about all of it that is very slightly unsettling. I've yet to be able to put my finger on what it is.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    Some of her ghost stories are excellent.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Sarasa wrote: »
    Some of her ghost stories are excellent.
    Thank you very much for that link. I think it expresses a bit of what I've been trying to put my finger on - that in the children's stories adults' sadness and dark sides are never far away.
  • Sarasa wrote: »
    The Story of the Amulet was my favourite too, hence choosing it as this month's book. I've only read one adult Nesbit novel, The Lark. It was fun, but totally ran out of steam at the end. Anyone else read her adult stuff?
    I read “The Lark” quite recently. I liked it but in a sort of bemused way. The whole thing was just odd, and although it was called an adult novel, and though children wouldn’t want to read it, it still read more like a children’s book to me. Maybe there is a reason why her children’s books are the ones that have endured.
  • Having reread the Psammead trilogy as an adult I suspect the element of fantasy drew us in as children so the dark stuff was less obvious. The series about the Bastable kids (the wouldbegoods is the one I recall) and the Railway Children were much darker if easier for the BBC to film….
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I have not found the sad elements of Nesbit's books unsettling. The one thing I have found unsettling is an odd mix of mawkish sentimentality and snobbery, which occasionally surface and make me cringe, but in general I find the humour, intelligence and liveliness of her novels far outweigh these. But I haven't read the Psammead trilogy - I started Five Children and It as a kid and wasn't drawn to it the way I was to the Bastable series and the Railway Children. So I'm curious to read it now and see what I think.
  • fineline wrote: »
    I have not found the sad elements of Nesbit's books unsettling. The one thing I have found unsettling is an odd mix of mawkish sentimentality and snobbery, which occasionally surface and make me cringe, but in general I find the humour, intelligence and liveliness of her novels far outweigh these. But I haven't read the Psammead trilogy - I started Five Children and It as a kid and wasn't drawn to it the way I was to the Bastable series and the Railway Children. So I'm curious to read it now and see what I think.

    I loved Five Children and It, and especially the Phoenix and the Carpet, which is still one of my favourite children's books.

    I do love the railway children too, but since reading The House by the Railway (1896) - which is essentially the same book and not by her - really difficult to avoid the idea that Nesbit pinched a lot of it. Separated family, forced relocation with mother to a new house in the country by a railway line, avert danger on line by tearing up red petticoats to attract attention, presented with engraved watches, family reunited, the end.

  • E Nesbit had a lot of sad endings herself. Reunion of families is a big one. She lost a favourite son in childhood ( interestingly called Robert) and raised 2 of her profligate husband’s bastards without complaint.
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    I am reading the book on Gutenberg.org and am about two thirds through. Earlier in the year I mentioned that the bible study I attend at a church much more conservative than my Sunday church, was doing studies on the 'Culture Wars',* with of course a right wing bias. I ended up not attending most of the sessions, but for one session I did attend it was all about how the Labour movement is evil and communist and the evils of the Fabian Society and how therefore any welfare or left wing policies are evil and anti-Christian. As a left wing kind of pinko, pacifist Christian I had to come up with some counter-arguments! I only vaguely remembered the name so did some research and was surprised to find Edith Nesbitt was a founder.

    Before this I had read the Railway Children a couple of times - I didn't mind it as a child, but found the children insufferable as adults. I know their family was struggling, but they were still pretty well off and better off than a lot of people who helped them. I was surprised an author who wrote such middle class child characters who seem to be oblivious to the lives of the working class was so left-wing ! Then I got up to the chapter on the Queen in London and the stock exchange. Without giving away any spoilers: Yikes! The stereotyped English stockbrokers were easy to stomach, but the Jewish stock brokers, not so much and one short scene is very dark for a kids' book.

    I haven't read any of this series, but had watched some of the 1991 series of 'Five Children and It' when I was 12. Maybe I was too old for it, or maybe I just didn't like the tension of all the wishes going wrong, but I never really liked the T.V. show. In this book the children sometimes almost deserve things going wrong and as an adult I know all will end well so it doesn't have the same tension.

    *Covid lockdowns and restrictions meant the church stopped running after church classes on the Culture Wars and therefore we are now back to studying the actual bible (Colossians) in the mid-week study to my great relief!
  • Ah yes, the “ impertinent miracle” by the Queen ( may she live forever!) of Babylon. That was one of the dark chapters which comes to mind. It seems that the Fabians ( forerunners of the “ chattering classes” ) had well and truly absorbed all the anti- Jewish stereotypes of their solidly middle class forebears. And as you say, the hired help and the urban poor were barely awarded human status.

    Even Leonard Woolf was known as “the Jew” by his Bloomsberry mates.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    Lets not stray too far into discussing things that occur in the book just yet.
    I was thinking in lots of ways Nesbit is a vast improvement on other Victorian children's books. Take Jessica's First Prayer, where the heroine can't go to church until she has decent clothes to go in Very much a story about knowing your rightful place. Then there's one, the title of which I can't remember, where a Frenchman saves a drowning child at the cost of his own life, even though he's a Catholic.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I started to read the entire trilogy, starting with Five Children and It, and am reminded why I didn't like it as a kid - it kind of reminds me of the cautionary tales with their extreme moral lessons. I know it's more light hearted, but the suggestions that these kids could accidentally kill themselves or their baby brother by a careless wish seem a bit heavy handed!
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    Has anyone else read Five Children on the Western Front Kate Saunders' continuation novel? It's rather good, but also rather sad. I wish she hadn't realised that Cyril and Robert would be exactly the right age to end up in the fighting.
  • The Fabians were a mix though mostly middle class who wanted to change thing but not too fast. My great grandfather was another early member though one of the uninteresting ones; he did know Edith Nesbit from even the pre-Fabian days which probably explains in part why my grandmother gave me and presumably the other grandchildren some of Nesbit's books (including Five Children and It and sequels).
  • Sarasa wrote: »
    Has anyone else read Five Children on the Western Front Kate Saunders' continuation novel? It's rather good, but also rather sad. I wish she hadn't realised that Cyril and Robert would be exactly the right age to end up in the fighting.
    Did not know that the sequel exists. Will have to track it down…
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Sarasa wrote: »
    Has anyone else read Five Children on the Western Front Kate Saunders' continuation novel? It's rather good, but also rather sad. I wish she hadn't realised that Cyril and Robert would be exactly the right age to end up in the fighting.
    I haven't and didn't know one existed. At first sight the title sounds like one from that series of modern spoof Ladybird titles that are around at present - The Ladybird Book of the Hangover and Five Give Up the Booze!

    I have very mixed feelings about prequels and sequels written by other authors although, to be fair, I haven't read Wide Sargasso Sea which I've heard is very good. I quite enjoyed Scarlett but years ago I read either a sequel or a prequel to Rebecca and spent a very long time wishing I hadn't. Thankfully I've now forgotten it (and don't want to be reminded, thanks! :wink: ) as it spoiled that lovely book for me for a very long time.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Ha, I was thinking the same as Nenya, that at first glance it made me think of those parody Ladybird books. I also have mixed feelings about sequels written by other authors. I like the post-modern retellings of classics to challenge stuff like colonialism, sexism, etc. (Coetzee's Foe, for instance), and I'm reminded that I haven't yet read Wide Sargasso Sea and want to. I also liked Jacqueline Wilson's retelling of What Katy Did, to give a more realistic, less sentimentalised, depiction of disability. I'd never heard of a sequel to the Psammead novels, and am curious how it deals with the fantasy aspect - whether the Psammead is still with the characters in adulthood. I think that could be quite interesting.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    I believe Jacqueline Wilson has also written some sort of modernized follow-up, but I am not intending to read it.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Ah, interesting- I googled for Jacqueline Wilson's version and found a Guardian article she wrote about it: here.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    That article has made me want to read Four Children and It. Wilson seems to be a real Nesbit fan which I think you need to be to write a good tribute book. I also like the quote from The Story of the Treasure Seekers, which is another example of the dark side of life not being far away in her books. "We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don't care because we don't tell you much about her you only shows that you do not understand people at all."
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Yes, I liked her comments about The Story of the Treasure Seekers - and the game Oswald makes of saying he's not going to tell us who the narrator is and he bets we can't guess. Of course, it's so fun as a child to feel clever that you've worked it out, and also amusing to read again as an adult and see the humour in having a bit of a self-righteous boy narrator using this technique to boast shamelessly of all his superior traits in a way that social etiquette would never allow if he were saying 'I'! He switched to 'Oswald' whenever he wants to blow his own trumpet, and then even talks about what a modest boy Oswald is! I do love the mischievousness of Nesbit's humour.

    I'm trying to work out what's going on with the narrator of Five Children and It, as there is a definite intrusive narrator who is full of opinions, and a slight grumpiness, but I'm not sure if we just accept this is the omnicient narrator who happens to be telling the tale, or if they will materialise as an actual character within the story.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    fineline wrote: »
    I do love the mischievousness of Nesbit's humour.
    I do too, I loved the way Oswald makes some comment about he bets the reader will never guess who the narrator is and then makes it clear within another couple of sentences. There are lots of examples but the one that sticks with me is from (I think) The Phoenix and the Carpet where the narrator comments that you should never try to light a fire with today's paper as it won't burn well, and there are also other reasons not to.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    My favourite bit of narrator humour so far in Five Children and It is this bit:
    'Autres temps autres mœurs,' said the creature.
    'Is that the Ninevite language,' asked Anthea, who had learnt no foreign language at school except French.

    Though I can't tell if Nesbit has created a naive narrator for us to laugh at, or if she's created a mischievous narrator with a droll sense of humour. Same with the comments about the earth clearly not really being round. I kind of hope the former - it's fun to have meta layers like that, where events are being recounted and judged through a character who acts as the ultimate authority but is also being portrayed in a way to reveal quirks and limitations to be laughed at.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    I've just read Wilson's Four Children and It and re-read Five Children and the Western Front by Saunders. The Wilson is quite a romp. She does 'difficult' children and dysfunctional families so well. She's a bit light on the psammead, to her the important thing is the wishes and what happens. The Saunders' is more together all serious, and the psammead's story is tightly woven into what is happening to the children (some of them adults) during World War 1 She also manages to address some of Nesbit's failings about class in quite a subtle way. I might try Helen Cresswell's take on it next as I seem to be fully immersed in the story.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Sarasa wrote: »
    I've just read Wilson's Four Children and It and re-read Five Children and the Western Front by Saunders. The Wilson is quite a romp. She does 'difficult' children and dysfunctional families so well.

    She really does, doesn't she - I'm always impressed with how she deals with complex, difficult stuff in a straightforward style, on a level for kids, and still makes the books fun. I'm going to try and get hold of this to read.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    Thanks everyone - the Jacqueline Wilson sounds good actually. I’ll have a look for a copy.
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    I have finished the book. I think it is a very different read for an adult than for a child reading it for the first time. There seemed to be quite a few jokes or references to the ills of society put in for adult readers. I don't think they would put a child enjoying licking sweet white paint off their paint brush today, even though today's kids' paints are non-toxic, for fear kids would copy it. Pretty sure Jane was at risk of lead poisoning, perhaps part of Nesbit's critique on how children were raised in the early 20th century!
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Edith Nesbit featured on morning prayer from Canterbury Cathedral this morning as she was born on this day, 15th August, in 1858. The dean talked particularly about The Railway Children.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    edited August 2021
    I'm going to be busy over the next few days so I'm posting some questions up early. As always feel free to ignore or to pose your own questions instead.

    1. The narrator, did you find it intrusive or enjoy their asides. Do you assume it is Nesbit or another unseen character.
    2. Which episode(s) did you enjoy the most? Is there anywhere you think they should have gone that they didn't.
    3. Was it a satisfactory story. Did it make logical sense within its own parameters.
    4. Did the casual racism and the attitudes towards working class people spoil your enjoyment of the book (assuming you did enjoy it)?
    5. If you could travel to the past of the future where would you want to go and why?
    6. If you know anything of ancient civilizations (I don't), do you think Nesbit's re-imaginings were accurate?
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Just some initial thoughts. I'll be back.

    1. The narrator, did you find it intrusive or enjoy their asides. Do you assume it is Nesbit or another unseen character.
    I enjoyed the asides and always assume it is Nesbit having a quiet smile with the reader.

    2. Which episode(s) did you enjoy the most? Is there anywhere you think they should have gone that they didn't.
    I enjoyed most of them in their different ways. I found chapter 10 quite striking - "The Little Black Girl and Julius Caesar" - where the learned gentleman wished they could take the child to a home where they would be glad to have her and the way they did, and found her mother, but was it really her mother? And the Psammead's wisdom in the comment "Who knows? But each one fills the empty place in the other's heart. It is enough." I thought a lot about that.

    3. Was it a satisfactory story. Did it make logical sense within its own parameters.
    Yes. As often with fiction, once I'd made that willing suspension of disbelief I think it worked pretty satisfactorily for me.

    5. If you could travel to the past of the future where would you want to go and why?
    I'd go back and rectify some of my own past mistakes.

    6. If you know anything of ancient civilizations (I don't), do you think Nesbit's re-imaginings were accurate?
    I don't either - and I doubt they were accurate. With the lack of sanitation and health care in the places they visited... think of the smells...

  • I did a bit of looking at the London geography. The children normally live with their parents in Camden Town while the old Nurse lives on Fitzroy Street which is about a 15 minute walk to the British Museum.

    Note btw that sanitation might well have been a problem in London circa 1905. Still a lot of horses been used for transport though the trams mentioned early on could have been electric.
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    edited August 2021

    1. The narrator, did you find it intrusive or enjoy their asides. Do you assume it is Nesbit or another unseen character.

    I didn't find the narrator intrusive. I didn't really notice the asides sticking out at all.

    2. Which episode(s) did you enjoy the most? Is there anywhere you think they should have gone that they didn't.

    I liked Atlantis since I didn't keep trying to remember if it was accurate to my knowledge of what the real historical places were like and could just enjoy the descriptions of the fictional city. I also liked the adventure in the future as I like comparing science fiction predictions of the future with reality to see how accurate they were. I feel conflicted about H.G. Wells due to his personal life being pretty icky, but have read a book of his predictions and I think this chapter may have been influenced by his ideas as Nesbit knew him.

    My favourite scene was when the children went to a magic show and the Egyptian priest popped up in the audience from the past and the magician assumed it was an amazing magic trick.

    3. Was it a satisfactory story. Did it make logical sense within its own parameters.

    I was expecting the children to look more systematically for the amulet from the start and found it a bit irritating that they seemed to be going on random adventures most of the time. However it was consistent with their ages and interests and eventually they started to think more critically about where to look and learnt more from each trip in time.

    I got more enjoyment going down internet rabbit holes inspired by this book. The paint brush licking episode led to me researching if white paint from the past contained lead and was sweet as described and then learning lots of history about how lead might have caused Roman rulers to go mad and how the U.S. allowed lead paint a lot longer than other countries and everyone's laxness about lead meant we had cars with poisonous lead petrol for far longer than needed. Many countries also used lead as a sweetner for wine 🤢I also enjoyed reading more about the Phoenicians and trying to find out if they really did go to Cornwall to trade for tin.

    I tried to find contemporary reviews of the Psammead series in the free Australian newspaper archives to see what the reception was of it at the time. It was reviewed as a delightful series for children with more realistic children than the precious angels or moral examples of many books of the time. (Although I have read quite a few books from the same time period where the children more rounded than these children, in my opinion). No reviewers picked up on the more adult themes alluded to, which was interesting.

    I also found out Edith Nesbit had a fairly famous/infamous lawyer cousin in South Australia, Edward Nesbit, later know as Paris Nesbit. He was a lawyer who was a child prodigy who translated one of Goethe's works at age 10, but also struggled with his mental health and was locked in an asylum in Melbourne for stalking a woman and breaking into her house. He was then released, but jumped overboard from a ship travelling back to South Australia and tried to swim back to Melbourne to find the woman, leading to another stint in the asylum. When his health was good he wrote a lot of long lasting legislation though and was a popular identity in Adelaide. He seemed to spruik his cousin's talents quite a bit, but as the most talented woman poet of the times, rather than as a children's author. Was/is Edith Nesbit known for her poetry, or was Paris just boasting about his famous relative? I found a few examples in the newspapers, but I don't know enough about poetry to judge how good they were.

    4. Did the casual racism and the attitudes towards working class people spoil your enjoyment of the book (assuming you did enjoy it)?

    As mentioned earlier, the stock market scene threw me, both the violence and the anti-antisemitism. Even the violent scenes in the past were a bit much. The children just conveniently returned home and left people murdering each other quite a bit without much concern. It made me less sympathetic to their trials, but by the end I was happy their family was reunited. It was interesting that the book promotes better treatment of the working class, while also portraying them as not very bright.

    There was also the still unfortunately common idea that people who live in advanced, wealthy civilisations are more intelligent and/or superior than people in less developed societies which I find distasteful.

    5. If you could travel to the past of the future where would you want to go and why?

    I have read too many time travel books with unintended consequences to want to travel to the past or future!

    6. If you know anything of ancient civilizations (I don't), do you think Nesbit's re-imaginings were accurate?

    I think some were fairly accurate based on theories and knowledge of the time, but I'm not sure about the blond people in Egypt from the first adventure, whether that was a theory at the time or just something Nesbit made up. Racism did lead to various theories that European people must have ruled Egypt when the pyramids etc. were built, because people from North Africa or Arabia would not be intelligent enough to build them or know the mathematics required, in the mind of white supremacists.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    Here are my thoughts.

    1. The narrator, did you find it intrusive or enjoy their asides. Do you assume it is Nesbit or another unseen character.
    I hadn't given this much thought before. I don't think I noticed the narration when I read the book as a child, and as an adult I've just enjoyed the asides. I think I've always assumed it was Nesbit, as it sounds very much like I think she would have sounded.

    2. Which episode(s) did you enjoy the most? Is there anywhere you think they should have gone that they didn't.
    I too enjoyed Atlantis, and I rather liked the whole episode of the trip to the Tin Isles. The meddling in history so Julius Caesar didn't invade (well not that time), was quite fun too.

    3. Was it a satisfactory story. Did it make logical sense within its own parameters.
    I loved this book as a child, and still think its interesting that a lot of London mentioned in the book is still there today. I also liked the fact that there were separate adventures, something I still like in a book. I now wish that some of the episodes were longer and that the story developed a bit more. I'd like to know what happened to the Babylonian queen, and I guess C.S. Lewis did too, as Jardis in The Magician's Nephew pretty much seems to be her.

    4. Did the casual racism and the attitudes towards working class people spoil your enjoyment of the book (assuming you did enjoy it)?
    I don't know if Nesbit was anti-Semitic, but she certainly comes across this way in this book. The first chapter with the blond blue eyed inhabitants of Egypt being over-run by people who looked like the man that had sold them the amulet was an example I don't think I'd have noticed as a child.

    5. If you could travel to the past or the future where would you want to go and why? I thought Nesbit's future was interesting, maybe more so than I did as a child. Clean air and re-cycling seemed very much part of the culture, though Nesbit seemed a bit hazy on what everyone was doing for a living. I think I'd like to go back to Nesbit's time and actually see what the children saw.

    6. If you know anything of ancient civilizations (I don't), do you think Nesbit's re-imaginings were accurate?
    Apparently Nesbit sent the drafts of the chapters to Wallis Budge to whom the book was dedicated for his opinions, so I guess she tried to re-imagine the past in a way she thought was reasonably accurate. I've mentioned Five Children on the Western Front, but until I read about Wallis Budge's life I didn't realise that Saunders probably based one of the characters on him.

    I've really enjoyed immersing myself in the world of the Psammead for a while. I didn't mention him in my questions but what did you think of him as a character?
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I liked the way the Psammead, a sand fairy, was not at all like the fairies in other stories - magical and unusual, yes, but also odd-looking and moody! I mentioned his wisdom (such as my example above from "The Little Black Girl and Julius Caesar"), and I warmed to him rather more when he was so dependent on the children for his rescue from the pet shop.

    Rereading it as an adult I do find the casual racism and attitudes towards working class people disturbing and dated but like @Sarasa I wouldn't have picked them up as a child and they didn't spoil my reading this time around.

    I hadn't made the link between C S Lewis's Jadis and the Babylonian queen and don't think I found that episode particularly unresolved.
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