Five Children

As a child in PNG, I loved the Five Children and It trilogy more than the Bastables. I preferred anything with magic to something similar without, and I re-read Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet over and over. The covers I remember looked like this:

and H.R. Millar's illustrations (name misspelled on the dust jacket of my ex-library omnibus!) are deeply embedded in my memories. So I settled in for a re-visit of these old favourites with great anticipation.

Alas, one element of these books which hadn't sunk into my memory was the awful, gratuitous anti-Semitism that surfaces several times in these volumes. Though Nesbit never uses the word 'Jew,' the stereotypes are easily recognisable, down to the big noses and love of money, and are even transported (inaccurately) into the ancient past. It's so sad and so unnecessary, I wonder if modern editions have been altered, because it would be so easy to do without affecting the stories at all.

Because in many other ways, these books stand up so well! The magic is straightforward and unfussy; the children get themselves into natural scrapes, especially when the Psammead is granting wishes (my favourite is when they wish their sweet toddler brother was already grown up, and he is transformed into a languid and patronising young man with a moustache and a bicycle). I'm sure the ancient history described in the Amulet adventures has all been debunked, and this volume contains the worst anti-Semitic episodes; yet it also contains my very favourite scene, when the 'learned gentleman' of their own time and the Egyptian temple priest become one in their love of learning.

I suppose one good thing is that clearly the anti-Semitic parts had no effect whatsoever on my childish soul; at the time I simply didn't understand them, so they glanced off without penetrating. And it would be perfectly possible to read these aloud and skip the bad bits. But I'm very disappointed to find these beloved books so stained and spoiled.