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Edward Eager

writer

Half Magic

by Edward Eager
In the first of the seven books, siblings Jane, Katharine, Mark and Martha find a magic wishing coin in the 1920s. But as wishes wont to be in stories, the wishes don’t work out as planned. This particular magic coin is only half-magic, granting only half of every wish (including time travel wishes), and leaving the children with the amusing challenge of finishing up the other half of the wish on their own. Sometimes it works out when they wish for twice what they want. Other times, not so much.
Don’t you see? She wished she were home and ended up halfway home! I wished there’d be a fire and got a little fire! A child’s-size fire! Martha wished Carrie could talk and she can half talk!
Half Magic by Edward Eager (Harcourt, Brace, June 1954).

Knight’s Castle

by Edward Eager
The children of the first book are now grown up, but Martha and her husband have children of their own, Roger and Ann, who spend a summer with their cousins Jane and Mark (sprung from Katharine). It was that summer that the oldest of Roger’s toy soldiers came to life and took them all to the age of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, chivalry, and knights.
It happened just the other day, to a boy named Roger.

Most of it happened to his sister Ann, too, but she was a girl and didn’t count, or at least that’s what Roger thought, or at least he thought that in the beginning.

Part of it happened to his cousins Jack and Eliza, too, but they didn’t come into it till later.

Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager (Harcourt, Brace, February 1956).

Magic by the Lake

by Edward Eager
The children of the first book are now grown up, but Martha and her husband have children of their own, Roger and Ann, who spend a summer with their cousins Jane and Mark (sprung from Katharine). It was that summer that the oldest of Roger’s toy soldiers came to life and took them all to the age of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, chivalry, and knights.
It happened just the other day, to a boy named Roger.

Most of it happened to his sister Ann, too, but she was a girl and didn’t count, or at least that’s what Roger thought, or at least he thought that in the beginning.

Part of it happened to his cousins Jack and Eliza, too, but they didn’t come into it till later.

Magic by the Lake by Edward Eager (Harcourt, Brace, April 1957).

The Time Garden

by Edward Eager
Janet found this one for me, and it was the first of the series that I read. The story returns to Roger, Ann, Jane, and Mark from the second book. This time, a grumpy garden toad tells them of the magical powers of thyme. The magic takes the quartet back to the American Revolution, the time of American slavery, and an encounter with their own mothers and uncles (which we’ve already seen from the older generation’s point of view in the third book). There’s also a cameo by the children from E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet.
Because what if it did happen like that, and the young Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha came back with them to modern times? He could think of two ways it might work out. They might take the place of their grown-up selves, and there wouldn’t be any grown-up Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha any more, and that would be awful. Because nice as the small Martha was, as a parent she just wouldn’t do.

Or else there Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha would be, and there their grown-up selves would be, too, and they might bump right into each other. And that would be like those horror stories where people go walking down long hallways and meet themselves coming in the other direction. And everybody goes mad in the end, and no wonder!

The Time Garden by Edward Eager (Harcourt,Brace, April 1958).

Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager
Magic or Not? by Edward Eager (Harcourt, Brace, 1959).

The Well-Wishers

by Edward Eager
The Well-Wishers by Edward Eager (March 1960).

Seven-Day Magic

by Edward Eager
After two books with no time travel and possibly no magic, the series’ final book returns to both realms with the immediate appearance a magical book that brings forth dragons and 19th century Little House on the Prairie. Admitedly, it‘'s not clear whether any of the locales of the past are more than places out of fiction for Barnaby, John, Susan, Abbie, and Fredericka—but never mind.
“I knew it was a book!” whispered Susan excitedly. “It’s the girl in the Half Magic picture! It’s the little girl in the last chapter who finds the charm after Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha pass it on!”
Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager (Harcourt, Brace and World, October 11962).
as of 7:04 p.m. MDT, 5 May 2024
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