Mary Norton: Bedknob and Broomstick

To the best of my never very reliable recollection, what was in my mind when I picked up this Puffin edition, in whichever charity shop it was, went along the lines that I had read The Magic Bedknob as a child, and that I had liked it less than The Borrowers, that the magic in it had not caught my imagination; but I had never read Bonfires and Broomsticks, and here was the combined edition, why not give it a whirl?

( Bedknob )

tl;dr version: If you read The Magic Bedknob - and when I read it as a child I probably did - expecting the sort of story E. Nesbit wrote, in which a family of children explore all the possibilities of a magic talisman, you will be disappointed at the mere two magic journeys, one of them not all that magical. But read it for itself, for its characters and its wit, and it is much improved.

This is even more true of Part Two - the story originally published as Bonfires and Broomsticks. It is a single adventure, although the bed flies several times. It takes three chapters to reach the point of take-off, and again, you can regard this as an unconscionable amount of padding, or you can enjoy the children scheming to engineer their reunion with Miss Price, and then persuading her to allow one last adventure.

( Broomstick )

tl;dr version: Goodness, I wasn't expecting that.

So now I should probably reread The Borrowers.