The Phoenix and the Carpet by E Nesbit

The children are still making wishes and still not quite getting what they wished for...

Random House has created a Looking Glass Library series that offers old classics for children.  They sent me this book and it's very nicely put together.  Bruce Coville does the introduction.  (Thank you for this opportunity.)

Ms. Nesbit had a most magical imagination.  She wrote a lot of children's books, but I'm only familiar with this series.  An Englishman sent me a copy of The Five Children and It to read and told me it was a classic English children's book. He's right, it is.

The series consisted of the following books:
Psammead Series
1902 Five Children and It
1904 The Phoenix and the Carpet
1906 The Story of the Amulet

I had read the first book and knew how much trouble these young ones could get in with active imaginations and wishes to use.  So I was not the least bit surprised when this book begins with a magic carpet and a Phoenix popping into the story.

The children have marvelous ideas for travel on the carpet and what they want to accomplish but, somehow, it just never comes out quite right.

Travel with them to far away lands, see sights you can only imagine, and share the horror they feel when a simple plan turns out wrong and danger is around.

These stories were written in simpler times, but the fantasies are just as good today.  Children will laugh out loud at some of the antics of the characters.

Share a good, old-fashioned story with your child.  I'm collecting this series since I am so taken with the stories.  I won't tell if you buy them for yourselves, OK?

This lovely looking edition is available now at your local bookstore.  Check it out.  And happy reading.