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#54 Half Magic by Edward Eager (1954)
38 points

Edward Eager writes the essential books about four children having a magical adventure. This one has a classic concept and brilliant working out. – Sondra Eklund

This is one of my own childhood favorites as well. And I’m happy to report that it remains popular to this day.  A couple  years ago we had a classroom of kids come into the children’s room. After I did my usual intro and such the kids were allowed to look for books. Suddenly they swarmed like fireants over the child who had said loudly from the fiction section, “Oh, SNAP! Edward Eager!” I am confident that this was the only time in history that those particular words were put in that order. Turned out that their teacher had been reading them Mr. Eager’s works in class. They were new and very receptive fans and I doubt very much that they are alone.

The plot, as American Writers for Children, 1900-1960 puts it is that, “four siblings find a magic talisman that grants their wishes, but only by halves. They engage in a variety of wild and funny adventures as each makes a wish, carefully worded to allow for the feature of half fulfillment. But when Jane wishes inadvertently for a fire, a playhouse burns, and when Martha thoughtlessly wishes the cat could talk, the semiarticulate feline engages in an exasperating flow of half-meaningless words. Cautiously Mark wishes for a desert-island adventure, but the four are almost kidnapped and able to escape only through use of the talisman. Romantic Katharine wishes for a jaunt through medieval times, in which she first rescues Sir Launcelot from a dungeon, then, finding him ungrateful, challenges him to single combat and soundly defeats him. In the end the children decide to pass on their talisman to two small children in another part of town.”

One of these days I’m going to hold a Children’s Literature Quiz night and some of the questions will involve guessing famous authors’ real names. For example, we all know Edward Eager, but I doubt that many of us would have necessarily known that his middle name was McMaken. Also, I think that many Eager fans have difficulty separating his words from the art of N.M. Bodecker. The “N.M.” stood for “Nils Mogens” by the way. There’s another quiz question for later.

For that matter, I wonder how many folks have just assumed that Eager was British? He wasn’t, y’know. Nope. Born and grew up in Toledo, Ohio he did. He died of lung cancer in 1964 at the age of fifty-three. And with this book, Eager began what he called the “daily magic” series. Strangely enough, that moniker has never really caught on. We just call them the Edward Eager books, don’t we? He wrote seven altogether, and only one (The Well Wishers) was in the first person. And his biggest influence (though he did love his Oz books) was E. Nesbit. You can see it if you read books like The Phoenix and the Carpet or Five Children and It. Both Nesbit and Eager were fans of grumpy magic and grumpy magical creatures.

I was always inordinately pleased with the crossover moments within these books. I loved that the kids in this book would return in Magic By the Lake and then later their children would rescue them in The Time Garden. No other author ever really played with time like Edward Eager.

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  5 Comments on Top 100 Children’s Novels #54: Half Magic by Edward Eager, last added: 5/25/2012
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  Sondy said, on 5/24/2012 7:30:00 AM
  

  I confess, my favorite Edward Eager is Seven-Day Magic, because I loved the magic book that writes about what the children are doing and it brings them into books, and it tells the formula for magic books (thwarting and being thwarted). But last time I listed that, and it didn’t make the top, so this time I thought I’d go with the most well-known. Also, I recently listened to a production of Half Magic on audio, and it really does hold up over the years. (So does Seven-Day Magic, but all of those books are classics, so I voted for Half Magic as a definitely worthy representative.)

  ChrisinNY said, on 5/24/2012 9:16:00 AM
  

  I debated between Half Magic and Seven Day Magic, but went with latter. (Sometimes I think my favorite is The Time Garden, though, too.) I loved, loved, loved Eager’s books as a child and even tracked down E. Nesbit books because of the in text reference I saw in one. Glad his writing is acknowledged here.

  Genevieve said, on 5/24/2012 9:50:00 AM
  

  Same as Sondy – my favorite is Seven-Day Magic, but I voted for it last time and it didn’t make the list, so I went with Half Magic this time since I like it nearly as much and Eager has got to be on the 100 list. (Three books in a row from my votes, after none at all up till now. O happy day!)
  Bodecker’s illustrations are pitch perfect. (I like Quentin Blake well enough, but couldn’t hold with his illustrations when Bodecker’s are out there.) Any other books he illustrated that I should know?

  Kathleen Krull said, on 5/24/2012 2:06:00 PM
  

  Hurray for EE.

  Brandy said, on 5/25/2012 6:41:00 AM
  

  This book is the one that caused my daughter to realize she had the power to read long chapter books on her own. I have a great deal of sentimental attachment to it for that. She actually ended up liking Seven Day Magic and Magic by the Lake better in the end, but still.

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If you missed Part One of the Alan Silberberg Interview, it’s absurd for you to be here. I mean, really. Please follow the link to catch up.

Don’t worry, we’ll wait . . .

Late in the book, Milo gathers together a number of objects that remind him of his mother, that press the memory of her into his consciousness. Where’d you get the idea for that?

I think that comes from the fact that I really don’t have anything from my mother. Things did get thrown away or given away and it really was like she died and then she was erased. When I was writing the book I started to think hard about my mom and tried remembering objects that evoked her to me. That became a cartoon called “Memories Lost” which were all real objects from my childhood that connected me to her. After making that cartoon, it struck me that Milo would want to go out and replace those objects somehow and that’s why he and his friends hit up the yard sales.

There is a scene toward the end in one of my books, Six Innings (a book that similarly includes a biographical element of cancer), that I can’t read aloud to a group because I know I’ll start to slobber. It’s just too raw, too personal for me. And I suspect that might be true of you with certain parts of this book. I’m asking: Are there any moments that get to you every time?

I think there are two specific parts of the book that choke me up, though lots of little places make me reach for tissues. The chapter where Milo goes to the yard sale and finds a blanket that reminds him of the one his mom had will always get to me. My mom had that blanket, the “pea patch blanket” in the book — so as Milo wraps himself in it and remembers her getting sick — I am always transported to the image of my mom and her blanket. The second place in the book happens in cartoon form, when Milo remembers the last time he saw his mother, which was when she was already under anesthesia being prepped for surgery and she has had her head shaved and he can see the lines for the surgery drawn on her head like a tic tac toe board. That image is directly from my memory of my last time seeing my mother. It’s pretty heavy stuff.

And so powerfully authentic. Milo describes that period after his mother died as “the fog.” Was that your memory of it?

I think trauma at any age creates a disconnect inside us. I think the fog settled in for me slowly. As the initial shock of my

Today, in preparation for next month’s publication of Any Which Wall, I set out to look for other fans of Edward Eager, since WALL is a kind of tribute to Eager.  I thought maybe I could interest Eager fans in MY BOOK!

But sadly, I have to report that there’s just nothing online about Eager.  No fan page, no fan club, nothing.

I find this hard to accept.  Eager has been in print for half a century.  He was a bestseller in his day, and every library I’ve ever set foot in has had a copy of Half Magic on its shelves.  I know countless people who love his books, and yet– I guess he just doesn’t inspite the kind of excitement required for fandom.

Which has me thinking about devotion, obsession.  What is it about some books that inspires frenzy?  Madness? Passion?  Eager’s books are, I guess, not those kinds of books.

They’re not the kind of books you have wild nights with. They’re just the kind of books you marry.