Francesca Simon, Guest Editor February 2021: "I was 9 or 10 when I discovered Edward Eager’s fantastic books about a group of children’s magic adventures. Squabbling siblings Katharine, Jane, Mark and Martha pick up a coin on the way to the library. They think it’s an ordinary nickle, but gradually discover that it’s a magic coin. The catch is it only grants half your wish. I was so intrigued by the idea of magic’s wilfullness: that magic got fed up, that magic wasn’t controllable, that magic happened or it didn’t. The books enthralled me. The children were unlike story-book children: they fought and argued, their widowed mother had big money troubles, they were bookish and imaginative. If magic could happen to them, an ordinary family, it could happen to anyone. Perhaps even to me."
Beloved by young readers (and the parents lucky enough to share it with them) since it was first published in 1954, Half Magic is the uproarious tale of four children who discover a charm that grants exactly half of whatever they wish forwith results that are twice as unpredictable (and hilarious) as you might expect.
Jane, Mark, Katharine, and Martha manage to cope with an unexpected trip to the Sahara and a nearly disastrous trip to the time of King Arthur. But can even these plucky and resourceful children deal with the changes magic is bringing to their tight-knit family?
Set in Ohio in the late 1920s, yet fresh and funny now as the day it was written, Half Magic weaves its spell anew in this full-cast recording that will entrance newcomers as well as fans who have loved this wonderful book for decades.
