Five Children and It

About Five Children and It

The adventures turn careless wording and incomplete foresight into comedy. Meals, adults, locked doors, and the limits of a day keep intruding on magical possibilities. Follow how the siblings work together after the excitement of a wish wears off, and how the narrator lets familiar family irritations survive even in an extraordinary situation with seemingly limitless opportunities.

Reading focus

Explore wishes as practical problems, where magical freedom keeps colliding with meals, rules, siblings, and consequences no one thought to request.

This reading edition contains 52,858 words in 11 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: E Nesbit. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we nearly there?' And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, 'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit. And then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and mother said, 'Here we are!'

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