Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager (review)

This will serve as the first post in what I hope will be a regular series of brief "book reviews" in my efforts to uncover the best in children's books. First up: Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager, first published in 1959.

The book is a fairly quick read, at 197 somewhat large print pages in this 1979 Odyssey Classic edition. An afternoon or two will suffice for an adult reader. The are eventful pages, however, and will fly by. Pacing is excellent, with the story building to a satisfying and reasonable conclusion.

The setting is of course a simpler time, when parents could send children off to play by themselves through long summer days, ranging all over the (small) town and surrounding countryside. This should be instructive for today's youth in their more circumscribed lifestyles.

The title poses a central question, whether or not magic is real. This is developed seomwhat along the lines of a traditional mystery novel, which adds a nice element to the others in the novel. Adult readers may feel that this is resolved to their satisfaction by the end, but children, with their more forgiving and fluid attitude towards evidence and reality, may be able to retain some level of ambiguity which I think will reward them. Furthermore, in my post introducing these reviews, I discussed how I was focusing on realistic tales, so I find this ambiguity quite a refreshing change from Eager's other works in which the existance of magic is never in question. This alone makes this my favorite Eager book so far: as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm currently a bit "cool" on stories with fantasy elements in them.

Eager's characters are fairly simple but believable, with fairly realistic sybling relationships. Their imaginations are on full display, checking off one of my personal boxes. As in his other works, Eager sprinkles references to other interesting children's literature such as the works of E. Nesbit, hopeful that these will lead the reader to other finds. He does this in his own voice, which is present but not overdone, and in the childrens' voices also. Vocabulary is a bit of a stretch for the probably reader, as well as for believable characters, but it's a healthy stretch and not a strain.

Altogether, a delightful work.