Gain Access The Story Of The Amulet (Five Children, #3) Authored By E. Nesbit Offered As Multimedia Format

really didn't care for this, I found the children shallow and annoying and the story pointless, I realize that this is the third book in a series, so maybe I would have reacted differently if I had read the previous books, but what a dull read.
I find it difficult to judge works from the past, as they were intended for a different audience, However, I wanted to read this for a number of reason, not the least of which it is considered a children's classic, and it inspired other children's literature, in particular C.
S. Lewis's NARNIA series.

I can see why it was popular in its day, The kids are appropriately precocious, the story adventuresome, and the moral encouraging, All this aside, I found it too episodic for my taste, none of the kids stood out to me, and the thrulinethe search for the entire amulet in order to wish their parents homenot particularly compelling.


Would I recommend it No, unless you, like myself, are curious about the roots of classic children's literature, The third book in the Five Children series, is much the same as the others, The idea is very unique and has great potential, but the way it's carried out just isn't as good as it could be, Having the different attitudes and personalities of each of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane was very wellwritten in my opinion, but the whole time travel stories could have been so much more exciting.
London,rd November

Dear Virginia,

The Story of the Amulet is at last finished, and I delivered it to the publishers yesterday! I must admit that I am not entirely satisfied, and maybe I should not have spent quite so much time discussing it with my dear friends at the Fabian Society.
At first I was flattered by the keen interest they took, but after a while I almost began to feel that I was writing their book, rather than mine.


Mr. Wells, I am sorry to say, was the most egregious offender, I unwisely revealed to him at an early stage that Time Travel would feature largely in the plot this topic, as you doubtlessly know, is close to his heart and he gave me altogether more advice than I knew what to do with.
I hold him in the very highest regard, but I have my own ideas on the subject, in particular on the curious paradoxes that would arise if a Time Machine could ever be constructed and we were able to visit the past.
I am sure I have not presented these thoughts in the best possible way, but I feel they contain promise, and I shall not be altogether surprised if other authors continue where I have left off.
At any rate, I was sufficiently irritated with Mr, Wells that I was unable to refrain from teasing him the tiniest amount in the chapter where my young heroes visit the Future, I do hope he will take it in good part!

The other person whose influence you will immediately notice is Doctor Budge of the British Museum, who has taken so many hours from his important duties to explain the mysteries of Archaeology and answer all my foolish questions.
By including him in the story, I hoped I might find some little way to thank him, At first, I thought that what he lacked most in his life was the natural affection that comes so readily to young girls, I did my best to let my dear little Anthea give him what I could not but in the end, I decided that this was not what he truly wanted.
I hope I have given him a more suitable reward for the many kindnesses he has shown me, and it is with great trepidation that I await his judgement.


Alas, even if Doctor Budge declares himself well pleased, I must say again that I am not, I know what I want to say, and again I know that I have not quite said it, But I feel that next time I will succeed, I have started making notes there will be some new children I can already see Gerald and Mabel, and a Castle, and a Ring, and a love story.
I will tell you more in my next letter!

Affectionately yours,

Edith
I read some E, Nesbit as a child, and felt that she was an author I should like, but somehow never really warmed to her, The writing style was a bit too stilted, even for my tastes, which were decidedly more old fashioned than those of my peers, I appreciate her now much more, now that I've learned of her place in the larger context of children's literature, and realize how radical and inventive she was for her time.
Also, the subtle deadpan humor in the interactions between the children is something I've come to appreciate in my recent rereadings, Anyway, as far as this particular book is concerned, I know we had a copy of this Puffin edition in our household when I was a child I remember that blue striped dress vividly, and I'm fairly sure that I at least made an attempt at reading it.
The episode when the ancient queen arrives in modern London seemed so familiar, I have some doubts though maybe I know that scene because the queen's comment about the slaves being treated badly gets quoted so often, or maybe I'm remembering a very similar scene in sitelinkThe Magician's Nephew I do know that whether I attempted The Amulet or not, I didn't finish it, so the ending of this book was quite new to me, and surprised me with a couple poignant moments that had me sniffing a little.
I chose to read it now largely in preparation for a modern day addition to this series which I hope to read soon, sitelinkFive Children on the Western Front by present day author Kate Saunders, which takes the children to adulthood and WWI.
Of course, such a book has the potential to be disastrously bad, but I'm still quite curious to see what Saunders has done with Squirrel, Panther, the Lamb and the others.
Childhood Archaeology

The Story of the Amulet is the third of Edith Nesbit's Psammead Trilogy, about four children in Edwardian England who find a sandfairy a cantankerous creature like a dilapidated monkey with bat ears and snail eyes with the power to grant wishes.
After the calamities that follow some illconsidered wishes in the first volume, sitelinkFive Children and It, they agree that it will only grant the wishes of others, but will still advise the children on their other adventures.
So at the start of this book, it tells them to buy an ancient amulet, or sacred pendant, spied in a London junkshop, Unfortunately, the charm is incomplete, but the remaining half does have the power to transport the children to any place where it had been in the past, so they may reunite the two halves.




I have a dilapidated and thus worthless first edition of this, bought for my father in, the year of its publication, He read it to me as a child, Looking at it now makes me realize how much my imagination was shaped by our travels through its glowing arch to ancient Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, and Tyre.
And it gave me a taste for similar stories, My father, as I now see, adopted its structure to make up bedtime tales of his own, much as C, S. Lewis was famously to do later with his Narnia adventures, Unlike Lewis, though, Edith Nesbit has no religious overtones, But as a leading Fabian, she had strong socialist convictions which also appear in the book I can only guess as to its influence on my own beliefs today.




For some reason, I never read the book to my own children, Perhaps I was afraid that it might seem too dated, and would appeal too little to their interests children no longer learned Latin and Greek in school and seemed to be less interested in ancient cultures.
But nowadays the datedness would be much of the attraction, Nesbit's books are now a double feat of archaeology, opening portals not only on the distant past, but also on the lives of children in Edwardian London and the social conditions that they would have taken for granted.
As such, it is certainly worth revisiting by adults, I am even wondering whether I might try it on my grandchildren, If I do, I would absolutely want an edition like the present one, which retains the original illustrations by H, R. Millar. It is not that he brings the distant civilizations any more to life than in Nesbit's words, which weave a spell all on their own, But he perfectly captures qualities that were so obvious to the author that she did not even need to describe them: the four children, Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane, looking absurdly overdressed in their Norfolk jackets or pinafores, their social attitudes as "emissaries from the empire where the sun never sets" coming through clearly from every sketch.




Not that Nesbit herself is a strong proponent of Empire she is no Kipling, Rider Haggard, or Henty, Indeed, as so often in the book, she treats these matters with what seems to me a delicious touch of irony, Here is Cyril talking about missionaries:

Well, they always take the savages beads and brandy, and stays, and hats, and braces, and really useful thingsthings the savages haven't got and never heard about.
And the savages love them for their kind generosity, and give them pearls and shells and ivory and cassowaries, The great thing is to get people to love you by being generous,

But in Cyril's mouth, that last word is not ironic at all, We may scoff at the "generosity" of bringing corsets and suspenders to native peoples, but the way the four children treat one another and the world around them is politeness and generosity itself.
There is one lovely little episode where they take pity on a disheveled orphan girl they meet in the park, and unite her with a bereaved mother in ancient Britain.
And their encounters with the "poor learned gentleman" who occupies the top floor of

their temporary lodgings near the British Museum are a perfect mixture of courtesy and friendship, adopting him as a kind of honorary playmate.
This character, incidentally, is a tribute to the dedicatee of the book, Dr, Wallis Budge, an Egyptologist at the Museum and Nesbit's primary consultant,

What Nesbit made of Budge's knowledge reads as something creative and fresh, even today, She has a lovely way of talking to her child readers, especially when airily glossing over the more unlikely parts of her story, and she can achieve real magic when she needs to.
The scene when the amulet first comes alive and fills the room with its glowing light thrilled me all over again, even now, But she also has the sense to realize that eight or nine forays into the past would soon become repetitive, no matter how different the historical scenery.
So she cleverly varies the pace, The children take the Learned Gentleman with them on their trip to Atlantis he believes he is dreaming, They drop off the little orphan girl on their way to visit Julius Caesar, When they make friends with the Queen of Babylon, she expresses a wish to see their country, and soon she is walking around London, making wishes which the Psammead has to grant, despite the consequences.
There is even a sequence when they journey into the future, a sort of William Morris Utopia of garden cities and perfectly behaved children, oddly prophetic of the theories of modern urban planning, if not the less salubrious results.
Unfortunately, Nesbit uses these modern sections to expound her social views, and they do get a bit preachy, And when the children make a second visit to Egypt, they find themselves in the middle of a workers' riot that might almost be Petrograd in, But that visit also introduces them to another timetraveler, RekhMara, the priest of AmenRa, who returns to link several of the later episodes, The climax, in which the two halves of the amulet are rejoined and the Learned Gentleman becomes one with the Egyptian priest, is moving in its simplicity, bringing tears to my eyes.
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