Half Magic (1954)

http://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/eagere-halfmagic/eagere-halfmagic-00-h.html

I read this book as a kid because my parents had read this book as a kid (it would have just been released for them). Some of the parts really stuck with me and I remember hunting down the rest of the series and enjoying most of them. Rereading them now as an adult the book is a lot shorter than I remember and of course it reads like a book written in the 50s about life in the 20s because that's exactly what it is. I feel almost like it's going back three generations and that's pretty wild.

These children are of course fictional children written by an adult ... so they are very well-read. They drop lots of references to fictional characters or real people or real publications that just sailed right over my head when I read this before. Now with the power of the Internet they are just a quick Googling away. I wonder if parents reading this book aloud to their children in the 50s got a laugh seeing these things in print. Even as a child I was savvy enough to catch the biggest name-drop in the book which was the multiple references to the books by E Nesbit, and I know that when I finished this series her books were the next ones to be checked out. ( )

This is a childhood favorite and while I still found the story funny and inventive and the writing charming, I also noticed a lot more of its flaws. Like the racism, aaand the sexism. I know its a product of its time, but still. :/

There is a great full cast audio version of this book as well that is well worth checking out. ( )

How delightful. In a story that smacks of Nesbit, Lewis, Baum, and Enright, 4 siblings enjoy the adventure brought by a charm that only grants half a wish. I'm sorry I didn't discover this earlier. Young me would have enjoyed it so much.

Eager's championing of reading and the classics, including the above, was an added bonus that older me found gratifyingly fun though. ( )

Four children discover a magic coin that grants wishes by halves.

Edward Eager's books were stories I loved as a child and having re-read them as an adult I still quite enjoy them. The stories and characters hold up to the test of time. These books are clever and intriguing and the characters are very endearing. ( )