Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

This is a story about what happens when wishes go wrong.

Robert, Anthea, Jane, Cyril and their infant brother move with their parents to their new home in  countryside Kent.  As they explore their new acreage, the children encounter a Psammead, a type of fairy that can grant wishes.  But there is a catch: the wishes last only until sunset.  The Psammead agrees to grant them one wish per day.

The children's parents are called away for a few days by the sudden illness of their grandmother, and the children are to stay at home under the stewardship of their nanny.  While the cats are away the mice will play, and the children start experimenting with their wishes.  They soon find that all their wishes have unexpected and unwanted consequences, and the children have to meet these challenges in brave and resourceful ways.

Five Children and It is basically a series of vignettes, each dealing with a wish.  The author invents some rather interesting twists that derail the intention of each wish - although some are more intriguing than others.  The prose style is breezy and informal, but despite this the action does build into suspenseful climaxes and tapers off into settled resolutions.  There are authorial intrusions into the story at times.  These tend to be didactic in nature but are done with enough good humor to make them welcome.

I enjoyed this story of magical hijinks set in Edwardian rural England - there is something safe and comfortingly familiar about the place, like The Shire.