The Story of the Treasure Seekers

I love E. Nesbit

If Britain is to children's fantasy as Brazil is to football, then Edith Nesbit is our Pele-endlessly surprising and inventive. But she is more than that. There were fantasy writers before Edith Nesbit but she is the one that brought the magical and the mundane together in a moment of nuclear fusion. She opened the door in the magic wardrobe, pointed the way to platform nine and three quarters. She even had a hand in building the Tardis. And these are among her minor achievements. She is also simply the funniest writer we have ever had, while being the one who could most easily and sweetly break your heart with a phrase. Just try saying 'Daddy oh my Daddy' without catching your breath. She made the magic worlds feel as near as the Lewisham Road and she bathed the Lewisham Road in magic

She's the children's writer with whom I most identify. The Story of the Treasure Seekers was a breakthrough children's book. Oswald is such a very real narrator, at a time when most people were writing morality plays for children

An excellent book which gives a playful sense of what it was like to be a child in the 1890s. I was interested by the similarities and differences between being a child then and being a child now

I loved the direct first-person narrative in the clear, forthright tones of Oswald Bastable