The Magic Bed-Knob’s sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947), develops Nesbit’s idea of magical time travel. Then they go to a Pacific island where they are very nearly eaten up by cannibals, a clear echo from Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. The children fly to London, where they are arrested for disorderly conduct in public- that is, an unmade bed in the middle of the street. This magical helper, the equivalent of Nesbit’s Psammead or Pamela Travers‘s Mary Poppins, enchants a bed, turning it into a modernized variant of the fairy tale flying carpet. Three ordinary children befriend a nice neighbor, Miss Price, who takes a correspondence course in black magic. Nesbit, bringing magic into the everyday and elaborating in humorous details.

Her first novel, The Magic Bed-Knob (1945), is written in the true spirit of E. Norton, Mary (1903–1992), British children’s author, one of the foremost representatives of postwar British fantasy. The article below is by Maria Nikolajeva. I wanted to learn more about Mary Norton so I went to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature and found a wonderful article about Mary Norton’s books. The creation of Mary Norton, the Borrowers have stayed with me since childhood, constantly stealing my keys, my glasses, and enough socks to fill the Grand Canyon.

Remember them? Small, ingenious creatures that live in our homes and “borrow” our buttons, one sock from the pair, and other items you thought were misplaced. While I am sure it is based off an entirely original idea, it reminds me of The Borrowers. Every time I turn on the television I am bombarded by advertisements for the new movie, Arthur and The Invisibles.

The borrowers novel