But at evening they find out that the incoming tide has cut them off from the bed, and then they discover that the island is inhabited after all, with cannibals who intend to cook and eat them, and a witch-doctor who engages Miss Price in a magical showdown. She brings along her broomstick just in case, and they go to a Pacific island that is supposedly uninhabited and enjoy an idyllic day. Fortunately the children manage to escape on the bed again, and the next time they convince Miss Price to come with them. Things go from bad to worse when a policeman barks his shin on the bed in the fog, and takes the children to jail until he can get hold of their mother.
There they are at dusk in a London street in a brass bed and pajamas, while the fog rolls in and passersby wonder at the scene. The bed ends up in the middle of a street outside the house, which is locked, and their mother isn’t there. In The Magic Bedknob they only go on two adventures with the magic bedknob, which is a surprise because there are three children to begin with, so only two of them actually get a wish (though actually, Paul is the only one the spell works for).įirst baby Paul wishes to go to where his mother lives, so he can see her.
They don’t have quite as many adventures, and they’re much more serious ones (well, at least one of them is). What you would expect is more like Edith Nesbit’s Five Children and It, where the children go on one ill-starred but hilarious adventure after another, and finally realize that they’re better off staying away from magic. The spell can only be broken if the children renege on their promise to keep Miss Price’s secret. In order to make sure they keep her secret, Miss Price enchants one of Paul’s bedknobs so that, if they twist it one way, the bed will fly them anywhere in the world they wish (provided there is room for the bed to land) and, if they twist it the other way, it will take them to any period in English history (beginning with the Norman conquest of 1066).
There they soon discover that their next door neighbor, a proper British lady who teaches piano lessons and works for the Red Cross, is also a real-live, broomstick-riding witch. The three of them are being raised, apparently, by a single mother who works full-time, and during their summer holidays she doesn’t have time to look after them at home, so she sends them to an old aunt’s house in Bedfordshire (same region as in her Borrowers novels). The first book is about the three Wilson children, Carey (about 10) and Charles (about 9) and their 6-year-old baby brother Paul, who looks like an angel but is really a mischievous little devil. This was originally two books entitled, The Magic Bed Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks.
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