The Magic E

What if you could find buried treasure, not where X marks the spot under the blackest, heaviest, dirtiest dirt, but under the letter E in the dustiest, stuffiest, ancientest library? Sure you’ll only see shelves and shelves of books sandwiched together on their ends, standing and waiting patiently like good soldiers. But chances are an exciting hoarded wealth of a bookishy kind is hidden there filled with the most adventury adventures and the most magical magicalness. I think that is just exactly how Oswald would say it. But let’s start at the beginning.

In England more than a hundred years ago, a lady had been married only a short while when her husband caught the dreaded smallpox. While he was sick his business partner ran away with all his money, which Oswald would describe as a rash and direful act of the most ungentlemanly kind. Seeing that it was up to her to support the family, this lady sat down with a fountain pen (they didn’t leak so badly by then) and paper (which was still relatively expensive), or perhaps at an early typewriter (like a boxy black computer keyboard with high, hard-to push, inky keys that smack letters directly onto paper). She wrote great amounts of poems and articles, anything she could sell, even verses for greeting cards. But it was almost 20 years later that she began writing stories for children unlike any ever written. In 1899 came her first successful book, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, as told by a fictional yet noble and truthful boy named . . . oh, wait, I better not say. Oswald is much too modest.

This author shortened her first name, Edith, to one magical letter: E. She was E. Nesbit. To make up stories for her many books Edith used memories from her own tomboyishy childhood as the youngest of five siblings. Oswald would say that she collected lots more additionally brilliant ideas from the stacks and stacks of A1 books she had read, the both sadish and hilariousest happenings of her own five children, and her own most richful imaginings.

Her characters are most often groups of siblings quite like real children: smart, funny, and  full of all sorts of creativeness. Just like children today they relentlessly seek adventure, get hungry at least three times a day, and frequently wish they had more money to spend. Of course they are not at all perfect, but try very hard to be good. Oswald, along with his two sisters and three brothers, even start a club called The Wouldbegoods, the escapades of which always seem to end up in a jumble of comical disastrousness. Try as they might, the children quarrel among themselves and then have to make things right. They invent mischievous messes and then have to tell the awful truth. They think up well-meant but misguided quests and then have to find a way to get home.

Some of E. Nesbit’s stories are about ordinary children having extraordinary adventures in the real world. Imagine finding a burglar in your house, saving a train, and flooding your bedroom in the middle of the night (the latter of which Oswald is hesitant but nobly honest to say was done by his own self in pure innocentishness.) And some of them are about ordinary children having fantastic adventures by accidentally discovering magic. Imagine sprouting wings on your back, traveling back in time to ancient Egypt, and trying to eat invisible food when you’re very hungry. (Oswald wouldn’t know about any of that; it is Robert, Anthea, Cyril, and Jane who would.) But whether her books are about rollicking real-life adventures or incredible fantastical ones, Edith’s storybook children are always made of the realest realness and frightfully funny.

Like many treasures, E. Nesbit’s books are very old. They are also very British. Because of their extreme oldishness and Britishyness (as Oswald would say), if you decide to dig them up, you will come across a few unexplained and unrecognizable words or phrases. For example, you may not know what the author means by tea (an everyday sit-at-the-table between-meal snack), chink (money in your pocket), or jaw (talk too much).  Don’t let that stop you, unless you want to take time to look things up. You don’t have to understand every word to enjoy a story. Besides, you can usually catch on to the meanings of unfamiliar words just by keeping reading.

Everyone likes to try out new books, but the old ones mustn’t be forgotten. They are still around because they have stood the great test of all time. As the clever and perceptive Oswald would put it, these books still sparkle and shine like diamonds and rubies and pearls to the deepest degree of perfect A1-ness. He would recommend with his most enthusiastic energetics that you hurry and find a lurky-looking library for the secret purposes of unearthing a book by E. Nesbit, especially one starring Oswald himself.

Treasures await, only to be dug up, like a sand fairy in a gravel pit, that will make your innermost readingest wishes come true. If you can’t find these books while lurking in your library, take courage! Because these books are old classics, complete texts are available for free online. Just search for E Nesbit. She wrote or contributed to 60 books. 

But that’s not all. There is much much more delightfulness to the magic letter E. Some of the excitingest and most magicalishy books for children are around a half-century old or more, written by authors who have capital Es in their names. There’s E. B. White, Edward Eager, Elizabeth Enright, and Madeleine L’Engle. Some of these authors, including C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling, have said that they got some of their gratifyingest, most A-1 inspirationalistic ideas from none other than E. Nesbit, the author with the first magic E. (They didn't say it quite that way, but you-know-who would.)

Here is a booklist of E. Nesbit’s most famous treasures for children:

The Story of the Treasure Seekers (adventures of the Bastables: Dora, Oswald, Dicky,  Alice, Noel, and H.O.)
The Book of Dragons (fantasy stories)
The Wouldbegoods (the Bastables again)
The New Treasure Seekers (more of the Bastables)
Five Children and It (adventures of Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother they call the Lamb)
The Phoenix and the Carpet (sequel to Five Children and It)          
The Story of the Amulet (another sequel to Five Children and It)
The Railway Children (adventures of Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis)
 The Enchanted Castle (adventures of Jerry, Jimmy, and Cathy)  

The Dead of Summer

If you can believe it, I had never read Agatha Christie until quite recently. I mean, she is the world's most translated author, the biggest-selling writer in the world, outdone only by Shakespeare and the Bible! More than a billion copies sold in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages!

I've never been a mystery novel fan, I never even read Nancy Drew as a kid. But I happened upon a nice set of three of Christie's best at a favorite discount bookstore back east and decided to try her out. I had enjoyed film versions of these stories and was interested to know if I'd like the novels.I ended up reading them all right in a row: Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, and The Body in the Library.  I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed them. In British old-school style, Agatha Christie's books are extremely well-written, literary, full of interesting believable characters, underlineable, and so clever they get me every time. I say she's good for keeping one's "little grey cells" on the move. Now she is my go-to for trips or leisure reading. Nice thin small paperback volumes perfect for slipping in purse, pocket, or pouch. If you are lucky you can spot one or two on a thrift store shelf. In fact, I now frequent thrift and used book stores for the sole purpose of unearthing an Agatha Christie.

I asked a lady who runs a local used book store in an old house on our main street if she had any Agatha Christie. I had looked in vain on the many floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with mystery paperbacks. She told me that yes, she sometimes has them, but they are snapped up immediately, and would I like to be on her waiting list? That's how good they still are. Classic detective fiction from a classy lady.

 Christie's main character series creations are Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence, the delightful sleuths in many of her stories, although some of her best whodunits stand alone.

So this July, in the dead of a very hot summer, I have filled my LFL with the best murder mysteries, Agatha Christie treasures I have been collecting for the past year, well-loved, dog-eared classics. Try one, you'll like it. Then watch a dramatization---you can find practically endless Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple on Netflix, both series and movies. They are excellent. I think even Agatha, who died in 1976 after a very interesting life and stupendously successful 50-year writing career, would approve.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.  Agatha Christie