沙仙活地魔 (1902)

《沙仙活地魔》（英语：Five Children and It），又译《五个孩子与一个怪物》、《五个孩子与一个沙仙》，是英国作家伊迪丝·内斯比特创作的一部儿童奇幻小说，于1902年发行初版。故事主要讲述五位小孩意外从沙中挖出一个许愿怪物“莎米亚咚”，每天满足他们一个愿望。其续集《五个孩子和凤凰与魔毯》和《五个孩子和一个护身符》分别于1904年和1905年出版。

主要角色

西里尔（Cyril），五名孩子的老大

安琪拉（Anthea），排行第二的姊妹。

罗伯（Rober），排行第三的兄弟。

珍娜（Jane），排行第四的姊妹。

希拉里（Hilary），五名孩子中年龄最小的，坐在婴儿车里的婴儿。

“沙仙”莎米亚咚（Psammead），高龄八千岁的许愿生物。

影响

英国作家J·K·罗琳曾表示《沙仙活地魔》是她创作《哈利波特》系列小说的灵感来源之一。

J·R·R·托尔金小说《罗佛兰登》的角色“沙地巫师”（Psamathos Psamathides）也是以《沙仙活地魔》中的沙仙为原型。

改编作品

该小说曾被改编为日本卡通《莎米亚咚》。1991年，《沙仙活地魔》被英国BBC改编为电视剧《五个孩子和一个怪物》，总共6集。2004年，改编自该书的电影《沙仙活地魔》上映，由约翰·史蒂文森执导，并结合了几位哈利波特系列电影的演员。

Five Children and It is a fantasy children's novel by English author E. Nesbit. It was originally published in 1902 in the Strand Magazine under the general title The Psammead, or the Gifts, with a segment appearing each month from April to December. The stories were then expanded into a novel which was published the same year. It is the first volume of a trilogy that includes The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906). The book has never been out of print since its initial publication.

Plot

Like Nesbit's The Railway Children, the story begins when a group of children move from London to the countryside of Kent. The five children (Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother, Hilary, known as "the Lamb") are playing in a gravel pit when they uncover a rather grumpy, ugly, and occasionally malevolent Psammead, a sand-fairy with the ability to grant wishes. The Psammead persuades the children to take one wish each day to be shared among them, with the caveat that the wishes will turn to stone at sunset. This, apparently, used to be the rule in the Stone Age, when all that children wished for was food, the bones of which then became fossils. The five children's first wish is to be "as beautiful as the day." The wish ends at sunset and its effects simply vanish, leading the Psammead to observe that some wishes are too fanciful to be changed to stone.

All the wishes go comically wrong. The children wish to be beautiful, but the servants do not recognise them and shut them out of the house. They wish to be rich, then find themselves with a gravel-pit full of gold spade guineas that no shop will accept as they are no longer in circulation, so they cannot buy anything. A wish for wings seems to be going well, but at sunset the children find themselves stuck on top of a church bell tower with no way down, getting them into trouble with the gamekeeper who must take them home (though this wish has the happy side-effect of introducing the gamekeeper to the children's housemaid, who later marries him). Robert is bullied by the baker's boy, then wishes that he was bigger — whereupon he becomes eleven feet tall, and the other children show him at a travelling fair for coins. They also wish themselves into a castle, only to learn that it is being besieged, while a wish to meet real Red Indians ends with the children nearly being scalped.

The children's infant brother, the Lamb, is the victim of two wishes gone awry. In one, the children become annoyed with tending to their brother and wish that someone else would want him, leading to a situation where everyone wants the baby, and the children must fend off kidnappers and Gypsies. Later, they wish that the baby would grow up faster, causing him to grow all at once into a selfish, smug young man who promptly leaves them all behind.

Finally, the children accidentally wish that they could give a wealthy woman's jewellery to their mother, causing all the jewellery to appear in their home. It seems that the gamekeeper, who is now their friend, will be blamed for the robbery, and the children must beg the Psammead for a complex series of wishes to set things right. It agrees, on the condition that they will never ask for any more wishes. Only Anthea, who has grown close to It, makes sure that the final wish is that they will meet It again. The Psammead assures them that this wish will be granted.

Characters

The five children

Cyril, known as Squirrel: the eldest sibling, who is brave, diplomatic, and book-smart (very intelligent)

Anthea, known as Panther: the second eldest, who is kind, sensible, and good-hearted.

Robert, known as Bobs: the middle child, he is a practical joker with a quick temper.

Jane, known as Pussy: a generally agreeable little girl with a tendency to be oversensitive, she is sometimes weepy and easily frightened.

Hilary, the baby, known as the Lamb (because his first word was "baa"). He is too young to walk and has to be carried everywhere.