Magic by the Lake
core novel 1957 Tales of Magic
Record
| First published | 1957 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.08 (5,469 ratings, collected 2026-10-06) |
| Page count | 190 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780152020774 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
The four children of Half Magic, Jane, Mark, Katharine and Martha, are back, a year on, with their mother and their new stepfather, Mr. Smith, who takes the family to a lakeside cottage for the summer. Primed by their last adventure, the children expect magic and go looking for it, and it comes quite unobtrusively, through a mild but determined turtle who informs them that the lake is full of magic and that they may have three wishes from it. Wishing proves as treacherous as ever: the magic has a will of its own and takes the children's words literally, and their wishes carry them to far-flung realms of piracy, to a boathouse dance and, in the book's most remembered episode, to a brief, unknowing encounter with four other children from a later book. As is the way with magic, it leaves a final and unexpected reward.
Where it sits
- Universe: Tales of Magic
- Series: Tales of Magic core; position 3 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Edward Eager
Notes
- From the series record (Tales of Magic): Edward Eager's seven novels of magic breaking into the lives of ordinary American children, written in open homage to E. Nesbit: two linked pairs (Half Magic and Magic by the Lake; Knight's Castle and The Time Garden, whose children are the first pair's children and cousins), two about a possibly magic wishing well, and Seven-Day Magic, in which the children meet characters from the earlier books.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Tales of Magic: position 3 of 7: previous Knight's Castle (1956) · next The Time Garden (1958)
Sources
← Tales of Magic dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.