Magic or Not?
core novel 1959 Tales of Magic
Record
| First published | 1959 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.00 (2,729 ratings, collected 2026-10-06) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780152020804 |
| Internal chronology | 5 |
Synopsis
The twins James and Laura move with their family to an old house in a Connecticut town, and in the backyard they find an old well. Their new neighbours, Kip and Lydia, a boy from a big noisy family and a girl who lives alone with her grandmother and draws, are soon part of the summer, and when a wish made down the well appears to come true, the children set out to use its magic to help the people around them: a lonely old woman, a boy in trouble with the law, a hidden family secret. Unlike Eager's earlier books, the magic here never shows itself openly, and the children, and the reader, are left to decide whether the well is really magic or whether everything that happened was coincidence and their own good will. The first of two books about the same well.
Where it sits
- Universe: Tales of Magic
- Series: Tales of Magic core; position 5 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 5 of 7: previous The Time Garden (1958) · next The Well-Wishers (1960)
Sources
← Tales of Magic dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.