bedknobs and broomsticks book mary norton

The necromancer is built up to be a very sympathetic character, worth going back to the past to rescue. It's only in the second book that they go somewhere interesting and do something interesting for someone who you kinda feel for. Escaping from cannibals? That's the story? That's all they do with the magic bed, and then for two years they do nothing with the knob? What a waste of a magical object! British children in the 1940's had no imagination! They're in possession of a magical device that can take them anywhere, any time, and they don't do anything with it! The first book is disappointing. Miss Price has given up magic, but she now owns Paul's old bed, and the children ask to go on one last adventure.įinally, at long last, the children go somewhere interesting: 1666 England! There they meet a man who is pretending to be a necromancer for money, and they are so taken by his story of a life of fraud in fortunetelling and casting fake charms that they take him to present day 1940's England to meet Miss Price.īut when they send him back home, they discover he is doomed to be burned at the stake for sorcery! Now it's up to Miss Price and the children to rescue him.

The bed-knob and magic have been forgotten for 2 years, and then the children answer Miss Price's ad in the paper for lodgers. It's enough to make their aunt send the children home. The children return home, bed soaked with seawater and pajamas filthy. The island is inhabited by stereotypical cannibals (bones through the nose, dancing around a fire, chanting, a witchdoctor-every Hollywood cliché you can think of), and they make their escape. Then they travel with Miss Price to a Pacific island for a lovely evening on a tropical beach (since beaches in England are cold and dreary). She's away, and instead they are picked up by a police officer and have a couple chapters in a police station, followed by a one-paragraph dilemma of how to get back to the bed. What's the first place they go? Back to London to see their mother. Miss Price enchants it, and now the children go off on wild adventures on their magic bed that can take them anywhere they want! Paul, the youngest, happens to have a knob from his bed frame with him.

If they tell anyone Miss Price's secret, the spell will break and the object won't work. But she can't have the whole village knowing she's doing this, so she makes a pact with the children: she gives them a magical device that can transport them anywhere they want, at any time, in return for their silence. Miss Price is teaching herself the craft, and though she is a beginner, she can still do some impressive things.

Bedknobs and broomsticks book mary norton