Name: The Enchanted Casle

Author: Edith Nesbit

Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Magic

Kathleen, Gerald, and Jimmy were spending their holidays at Kathleen’s school with Mademoiselle (the French governess) and Eliza, the only caretaker present for the holidays.

Gerald, having been able to convince Mademoiselle, tells the good news to his siblings. They pack a picnic basket and three horns, hoping to see the enchanted castle.

On reaching the picnic spot, they discover a cave which leads them to the garden of the enchanted castle. They find themselves in the middle of a maze looking at a princess, who they think to be Sleeping Beauty. Kathleen convinces Jimmy to kiss the Princess to wake her up.

The Princess shows them to her treasure chambers and when she tries on a ring, she becomes invisible! Thinking that her friends were just pretending, she shakes them and asks them to stop. When she looks around the silver mirror, she cannot see herself.

Amidst all of that, the Princess reveals herself to be the housekeeper’s niece, Mabel. Thus, she stays invisible for 21 hours before the ring could finally get off. Gerald takes over and becomes invisible for 14 hours when Eliza discovers him. Eliza then becomes invisible for 7 hours and Gerald realises that the ring is decreasing by seven all the time.

For their Beauty and The Beast play, Gerald paints people to be their audience called Ugly-Wuglies. Mabel being Beauty and wearing the ring, wishes for the Ugly-Wuglies to be alive… Gerald and Mabel go out in the dark and trap the Ugly-Wuglies in a cave with the help of the bailiff whom they tell their whole story.

The next day, they find the bailiff green in the face sprawled on the floor and the Ugly-Wuglies broken with their painted faces and clothes every where and to their horror they find an Ugly-Wugly like a real person!

Jimmy wishes to be rich and he becomes older not even recognising his siblings and Mabel. Fortunately, Gerald fixes the mistake, but Kathleen turns into a statue and Mabel 4 yards long. Kathleen invites Mabel and her brothers, and they become statues too being able to move around like the other statues.

Lord Yalding, of Yalding Towers, the Enchanted Castle is expected to come to the castle to rent it to a rich American. Mabel gets invited to a picnic with the bailiff and when Jimmy and Kathleen come too, Jimmy asks the bailiff to make a wish and Mademoiselle and Gerald appear. Soon it is learnt that the bailiff was actually Lord Yalding and Mademoiselle was Lord Yalding’s lover.

All of them return to the castle where they scare away the American thinking that this was what Lord Yalding wanted and they show him the treasures in Mabel’s treasure chambers when pretended to be a Princess.

Lord Yalding did not believe in the magic of the ring and refuses to marry Mademoiselle. On the day predicted by the statues, the light fell directly at the centre of the Temple and Mademoiselle makes a wish. ’’I wish that the magic ring and all of its causes disappear.’’ And so, it was. Mademoiselle married Lord Yalding and Mabel, Kathleen, Jimmy, and Gerald become friends with Lord Yalding.

And every holiday is spent at Yalding Towers…

The End

My ratings:

It was a very interesting book. The sort of Famous Five type. I loved it. It was the sort of book that gets you into it and I finished the whole book in one day!