By Edward Eager
Four bored children find a coin that grants wishes, but only half of each one, so they have to do the arithmetic before they open their mouths.
It is the dullest summer of Jane, Mark, Katharine and Martha's lives. Their mother is a widow who works long days at the newspaper, there is no money for anywhere to go, and the four of them are stuck with each other and the heat. Then Jane picks up what she thinks is a nickel on the sidewalk, and things start going almost right. Not wrong. Half right. The coin grants exactly half of whatever anyone near it wishes, so you have to wish for double what you want, and none of them work that out before the damage is done. Martha wishes herself somewhere else and turns up half invisible. The cat gets wished into talking and can only manage half of a sentence. They wish themselves onto a desert island and land in the Sahara, because half of a desert island is just desert. And underneath all of it, their mother is lonely, and there is a nice man named Mr. Smith at the bookshop.
The wardrobe is the part of Narnia most children fall in love with, the idea that magic could be sitting in your own house waiting. This book runs on that exact feeling and nothing heavier. Four ordinary children, one ordinary street, one coin. What makes it stick is the rule. The magic is a puzzle with a fixed law, and your child works out the arithmetic a beat before the children in the book do, which is the most satisfying thing a book can offer an eight-year-old. It is also very funny, the chapters are short, and there are six more books in the series once this one lands. It asks nothing of your child emotionally. It is the sunniest book on the shelf by a mile.