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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
medium-paced
3.5/5
One of the weirder children's books I've come across, which made it both intriguing and arbitrary at times.
One of the weirder children's books I've come across, which made it both intriguing and arbitrary at times.
5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
I began reading this book for a Teachers As Scholars class. I am glad I read it as apparently E. Nesbit is an important fantasy novelist of whom I knew little or nothing about. Some interesting facts that were pointed out in the class: the little boy named Wells in one of the chapters is actually a shout out to HG Wells, a contemporary to Nesbit. Additionally, Nesbit included Rudyard Kipling in her book as well in the British museum that the children visit. Heis the only nice adult among the other angry men.
Okay book but I am sure I would have liked it much more as a younger reader.
Okay book but I am sure I would have liked it much more as a younger reader.
I read this for a class on children's literature. The book is structured with each chapter being a sort of mini-adventure with a loose plot that connects all of the adventures together. I don't really like that structure typically because they always read more like short stories to me, which I'm not a fan of. Overall, I found this book a bit hard to get through, especially because the children are not given many distinctive features and it was difficult to remember who they were.
This book is full of my problem's with some children's literature. I understand that 'kids are kids", but that does not been you have to make absolutely stupid decisions. I could not get behind this book.
Read for a class. Reads like a less sophisticated precursor to Narnia. Still a fun, episodic story for children about kids going back and forward in time, getting into scrapes and miraculously getting out of them by the chapter's end. The children's adventures are imaginative and fun even if they aren't necessarily historically accurate. The ending resolution is distinctly weird, but maybe it would have come off better if 1) I lived in the time it was written (early 20th c) or 2) was a child-reader (basically if I was at all a member of Nesbit's intended audience), so I can't be too harsh.
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
A book about adventures in time, visiting ancient Egypt and Babylon, seems like the perfect premise for a book. Unfortunately, I was not pleased with the execution. I’m not a fond of the characters of the book, the children act spoiled and the acts of the Psammead are often contradictory (switches between nice and helpful and annoyed and gumpy, without any explanation). The Psammead is granting the wishes of anyone within earshot, except the children, who says “I wish..”. This however is completely overlooked at one point in the book (p.159) as it seems the author just forgot that the Psammead has this power. This is just one of several continuity errors found in the book. I find it difficult to review the book at it was intended for a different audience in a different time, but the continuity errors and racial stereotypes of the book were hard to look past. I am reading this book for class and have not read the first two books of the series. Definitely looking forward to our lecture on it.