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Five Children and It
- Narrated by: Lynda Bellingham
- Series: The Psammead Trilogy, Book 1
- Length: 1 hr and 5 mins
- Abridged Audiobook
- Categories: Children's Audiobooks, Literature & Fiction
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Summary
Robert, Anthea, Jane, Cyril and the Lamb are on holiday at the White House, a beautiful place on the edge of a hill with a chalk quarry one side and a gravel-pit on the other. Before they have even been there a week, they make an amazing discovery. Digging in the gravel-pit, they find a fairy! The Psammead is brown, furry, fat and shaped like a spider- as well as being very old, and very grumpy. But most importantly, the creature can grant wishes, and the children are soon having the most wonderful adventures...
An abridged reading by Lynda Bellingham of E. Nesbit's classic tale.
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What listeners say about Five Children and It
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- B. Davison
- 25-02-20
Very bad value
when searching for titles from E Nesbit I was offered this for one credit. having bought it I found out the whole trilogy is only one credit, that's not fair.
Lucent book, beautifully read, but go straight to the psamead trilogy instead.
4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-08-21
unexpected racism
I wasn't expecting a whole portion of the story to be a very racist portrayal of indigenous people. I understand it's an old story, but still it was rather igregious.
other than that it was a fun listen and was well read.
3 people found this helpful
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- Claire Elliott
- 20-07-20
Beautiful Story & beautifully read
I love this story! And to have it read to you by Lynda is just lovely.
Brings me right back to my childhood.
3 people found this helpful
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- Julie underhill
- 23-12-21
Narrated by a lovely lady, R.I.P Lynda Bellingham
an old story ,which brought back memories of my nana reading it to me. Happy memories and enjoyed listening to it by lynda Bellingham whose voice was very soothing and relaxing. A lady whom is sadly no longer with us.,and very much missed.
2 people found this helpful
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- Lucy P
- 05-09-21
My daughter loved this
The only boy that hasn’t time traveled well is the ‘Red Indians’ wish - the native Americans are depicted as fighting savages before disappearing. Otherwise, this is perfect.
2 people found this helpful
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- JET
- 09-01-22
Good
It was good but yes it was all so unfair to native Americans but apart apart from that quite good
1 person found this helpful
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- Eleanor Aimee Daniels
- 27-05-22
times have changed
enjoyable but unfortunate bigoted language used... appreciate is an old story from times when those words or descriptions were used but could maybe be replaced or updated
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- Amazon Customer
- 24-05-22
Good but scary
I loved it although it was quite scary at first because I didn’t now what the samiad was. Freddie age 6
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- Mel
- 15-08-17
The only problem is that it's not longer!
I had forgotten I had an Audilble membership, so I was using up the credits before cancelling my membership. I chose Five Children and It randomly for the last credit.
I put this book on during a 2-hour drive. Unfortunately, I spent most of the last hour of the drive, after this story finished, listening to "Have you got the next one yet? Can we listen to the next one? Mu-um, where's the next sand fairy story?" The only way I avoided the same questions on the way home was by re-playing this story. I think it's safe to say that my 5 year old liked it!
So I've now re-activated my membership and will be purchasing The Phoenix and the Carpet.
6 people found this helpful
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- Peter Schutte
- 19-05-18
Loved this story
My kids (ages 7-2) and I loved this story! It has adventure and some great life lessons. The more we listen to it, the more we laugh.
3 people found this helpful
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- Omki
- 08-11-17
Oh Childhood
this book was read to me as a kid and it's still just as fun now as it was then.
3 people found this helpful
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- jenn
- 12-08-17
I liked everything
my 5 year old: "another kid would love it, all of it. the fairy and the children and the parents were good. the fairy did magic for them and made magic tricks, one of the tricks was the fairy made a magical castle. there was nothing really bad... there were some bad things but then they were okay." 😊
3 people found this helpful
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- A. Rabe
- 01-08-17
Fun Listen, Good Discussion Starters
The story is both fun & good for discussion starters concerning morality for younger children? Would be a great story to apply classical five common topics of definition, comparison, relationship, circumstance & testimony in order to ask questions to kids.
3 people found this helpful
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- Jim "The Impatient"
- 14-08-17
THIS HAPPENS BEFORE MOTOR CARS
GO TO BED AND TRY AND BE BETTER CHILDREN IN THE MORNING
This is your typical "Be careful what you wish for" type of stories. Each day is like a new story as the children get a new wish from the sand fairy. Kids will enjoy it, as the children get into bad situations, caused by their wishes.
Lamb
The baby is called lamb, cause he is always making Baa sounds.
84 people found this helpful
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- Nicole Gent
- 10-07-21
Abridged yet delightful
Having just finished the unabridged read aloud with my kids (free on kindle), I did realize this version was a shortened one when I noted the duration but maybe they could make that clearer in the description.
That aside, this was utterly delightful and very well done! I wanted my husband to get a taste of what we had enjoyed so much at reading time so we listened to this in the car and he was laughing out loud - what a hit!
1 person found this helpful
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- Elysium Elysian
- 03-08-17
good family story
kids definitely need to be sitting and listening to this the narrating was somewhat monologue for younger kids.
5 people found this helpful
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- PintoBean
- 01-06-22
Short read by a wonderful narrator
This was a fun story that held the attention of my 7 year old. The smaller kids who aren't used to longer stories didn't pay attention. The narrator was engaging and animated. Fun!
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- AJAX_Muvvah
- 07-05-22
Racist to Native Americans
This book was going well until it hit to the racist part calling Native Americans “red Indians” and them wanting to fight them and dressing up to look like them. I just stopped listening after that part. Having native blood myself and a native child, I found this incredibly disgusting