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leaflibrary 's review for:
Five Children and It
by E. Nesbit
Interchangeable with lots of other British-siblings-find-magic-by-the-seaside stories, but less engaging. None of the siblings have distinct personalities and the episodic "wish-gone-wrong" formula quickly becomes tedious. There was also some midcentury racism in passages like this:
The children proceed to paint themselves red (although they do acknowledge that the Native Americans besieging them appear "more brown") to trick the "Red Indians" an idle wish brought to life. Their enemies come to scalp the children and are fooled by these ridiculous stripes of fabric pretending to be hair. Not only are these "Indians" horrifying stereotypes, they're also really stupid!
I've enjoyed other E. Nesbit books, but this one doesn't have enough redeeming qualities to warrant a read in 2019.
It is wonderful how like an Indian you can make yourselves with blankets and feathers and coloured scarves. Of course none of the children happened to have long black hair, but there was a lot of black calico that had been got to cover school-books with. They cut strips of this into a sort of fine fringe, and fastened it round their heads with the amber-coloured ribbons off the girls' Sunday dresses. Then they stuck turkeys' feathers in the ribbons. The calico looked very like long black hair, especially when the strips began to curl up a bit.
The children proceed to paint themselves red (although they do acknowledge that the Native Americans besieging them appear "more brown") to trick the "Red Indians" an idle wish brought to life. Their enemies come to scalp the children and are fooled by these ridiculous stripes of fabric pretending to be hair. Not only are these "Indians" horrifying stereotypes, they're also really stupid!
I've enjoyed other E. Nesbit books, but this one doesn't have enough redeeming qualities to warrant a read in 2019.