Jones, R.E., E. Nesbit's Psammead Trilogy: A Children's Classic at 100: [Review]

“THAT BEAUTIFUL Baalbec temple in the desert! Plenty of good
sand there, and no politics! I wish I were there, safe in the Past—that
I do,” whines the Psammead, that magical Sand-Fairy, at the very end
of The Story of the Amulet (1906), the third book in E. Nesbit’s magical
trilogy that began with Five Children and It (1902) and continued with
The Phoenix and the Carpet(1904). Like so many other moments in the
trilogy, this final scene is tinted by Nesbit’s soft, warm sense of irony:
after all, even though the Sand-fairy’s wish is swiftly fulfilled, readers
of The Amulet would be the first to know that the past is rarely free
from politics—and never really safe.