This December I’m recommending an enchanting Classic Fantasy novel for children by American author, Edward Eager (1911-1964). Half Magic was published in 1954 and is the first in a series of seven interlinked novels now known as Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic. These are available in all the usual formats in America but are harder to find in the UK where Eager’s fiction has never been well known. Fortunately you can get Half Magic as an ebook or as a paperback with sprightly illustrations by N.M.Bodecker and a helpful introduction by Fantasy author, Alice Hoffman.

Half Magic is set in Toledo, Ohio during the 1920s. It features four children – Jane, Mark, Katharine and Martha. They live with their widowed mother, Alison, who works as a journalist to support the family. During a long hot summer the children are fed up with not being able to go on holiday in the countryside and bored with life in the city. Their one treat is being allowed to borrow novels from the local library, which at least allows them to explore fictional worlds. The siblings’ favourite author is E.Nesbit (see Fantasy Reads March 2016) and they all wish that they could have exciting magical adventures like the children in Nesbit’s novels.

One day the oldest girl, Jane, finds a coin in a crack in the pavement but even this doesn’t put her in a good mood. She is so bored with nothing happening that she wishes aloud that there would be a fire. The children are very startled when they suddenly hear sirens and they follow a fire-engine to a backyard where a little girl’s playhouse has suddenly gone up in flames. No-one is hurt but Jane feels guilty and her siblings wonder if they have gained magical powers too. After they make wishes which don’t instantly come true, they conclude that Jane is the one with the magic and that she must be very careful about wishing. Afraid of her new powers, Jane refuses to experiment.

Alison picks up Jane’s coin, assuming that it is an ordinary nickel, and takes it with her on a visit to some very dull relatives. When Alison silently wishes that she was home instead, she suddenly finds herself in the middle of the countryside. She has to accept a lift from a kindly stranger, local bookshop-owner, Hugo Smith, in order to get home and is very worried about what seems to be a gap in her memory. Meanwhile, Jane has guessed that the source of the wishing magic might be the strange coin and gets it back from her mother. Before she can explain this to her siblings, Martha makes a wish in the coin’s presence that the household cat, Carrie, could talk. Carrie does begin to talk but in a very muddled way that is hard to understand. Jane cleverly works out that the coin is a charm that gives you half of what you wish for. This discovery comes too late to stop Mark causing multiple problems with two idle wishes.

After the children are unexpectedly transported to a desert, Mark gets the hang of wishing for twice as much as they need. Once they are back home, the siblings think carefully about their next wishes and agree to take it in turns. Katharine wishes them back into the days of King Arthur with a quest and a good deed to complete. During their adventures they encounter Sir Launcelot, who is not the perfect knight they expected, and meet Merlin who warns them against meddling with the patterns of history and tells them that their charm will soon run out of magic. This doesn’t stop Martha causing chaos in Toledo with an impulsive wish. While trying to sort things out, the siblings meet Hugo Smith, an adult with a rare gift for believing in magic. When the children reintroduce Hugo to their mother everyone is happy except Jane and that causes her to make the most unwise wish of all….

My wish is that I had known about Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic as a child. I’m sure that I would loved these novels, just as I loved the E.Nesbit books, such as Five Children and It and The Story of the Amulet, which inspired them. Eager grew up in Toledo before going to Harvard University. He spent most of his career in the theatrical world, creating the books and lyrics for musicals and operettas, but turned to writing children’s books when he couldn’t find enough suitable stories to read aloud to his son. The Tales of Magic do not form a straightforward sequence and involve several different groups of children over two generations. Magic by the Lake (1957) is a direct sequel to Half Magic but Knight’s Castle (1956) and The Time Garden (1958) feature the children of Katharine and Martha. In The Time Garden, which is probably my favourite book in the series, we get to meet grown-up versions of Jane and Mark. The books also differ in tone and in their attitudes to magic.

Eager would never have claimed to be a particularly original writer. He was happy to acknowledge the influences of other authors, sometimes mentioning them in the text of his own stories. What does make him stand out is the sheer liveliness of his storytelling. The language is never too complex for younger readers, the plot gallops along and there are no boring bits to get through. The author is a friendly presence, relating events with zest and humour but also making quirky or wise asides. In the course of the story the children get to know Mr Smith, a small man with a big personality, who has the twin virtues of believing in magic and being really good at communicating with children. Eager obviously had the same virtues and he could write from a child’s point of view utterly convincingly.

There is nothing sentimental about his depiction of the children in Half Magic. They bicker and whinge like real siblings and sometimes behave selfishly or stupidly but always in a way that is easy to forgive. Modern children will envy the freedom the siblings have to wander around by themselves but it comes at the price of the oldest being responsible for looking after the youngest. Jane doesn’t always make the wisest childcare decisions. Shoving a whiny Martha under a seat at the cinema inevitably leads to mayhem when the baby of the family turns herself into a ghost. This story was written for a boy, and Mark does come across as the smartest of the siblings, but his sisters are more memorable. Jane is moody and strong-willed, Katharine is the adventurous one who uses her wish to fight as a knight in a tournament, and little Martha is still a creature of impulse with no control over her emotions.

There is a long tradition in Folklore and Fantasy Fiction of stories about the perils of magic wishes. The offer to grant someone’s wishes seems to break the fundamental rule that you don’t get something for nothing but magic always has a price. In folktales, greedy wishmakers often end up worse off than they were before and even innocent wishes can have unexpected consequences. Eager’s Tales of Magic vividly illustrate the old saying that you should be careful what you wish for because you might get it. The coin-charm itself either tries to escape or grants wishes in a way that will cause the maximum amount of trouble. Mark discovers that adventures in exotic lands aren’t as enjoyable in real life as they are in fiction and Katharine learns that meeting your hero can be a big disappointment. Most of the unexpected consequences of the children’s half-granted wishes are played as comedy but there are more serious aspects to the story.

All the siblings have to face up to the fact that wishing someone was different cannot change their true nature. Their rational mother is genuinely distressed by all the strange happenings and can’t be persuaded that magic is real without destroying her personality. Fortunately Mr Smith, who loves Alison as she is, finds a way around this. Prickly Jane initially resents Mr Smith’s intrusion into the family, because she is the one sibling who really remembers her father and still grieves for him. Feeling the odd one out, Jane rashly wishes that she belonged to a different family; something most of us have probably done at some point in our lives. Jane’s tedious experiences in her new prim and proper home, soon make her appreciate the chaotic but loving family she already has.

So, if you are looking for a jolly family read over the festive season, try Half Magic. If everyone likes this one, there are six more Tales of Magic to go which should keep you going until the new year. In these troubled times I wish all my readers comfort and joy.

Geraldine

December 2025