Wet Magic

Children's LiteratureOverviewThat going to the seaside was the very beginning of everything - only it seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end like the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like paths and then turn into sheep-tracks and then are just grass and furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk.In Nesbit's 1913 novel Wet Magic the children of the Desmond family - Francis Mavis Bernard and Kathleen - are looking forward to a holiday by the sea. They get more of an adventure than they had planned on though when they accidentally summon a mermaid. And when that mermaid is captured and put on display at a local circus they decide they must rescue her. As their reward they are permitted to visit the hidden kingdom of the mer-people but find they must now stop a war to save their new friends.