Rosalind has been sent to live with her dad and stepmother for the summer while her mother goes to sumer school and is not best pleased. Rosalind is a bookish girl, her brother Robbie is similar, lost in a world of playing with his toy animals. But at their dad's house they have to cope with their new stepsister Samantha, always appropriately known as Smash, and life with a dad who always seems to be disappointed in them. However, there is compensation in the form of Maudy, their new half sister, an adorable toddler. On a day out having a picnic in the local woods they find a strange creature in the sand and Rosalind recognises it, it's the sand fairy or passamead from one of her books, a creature that can grant wishes.
In a wonderful tribute to E Nesbit's Five Children and It Wilson shows just what can happen when your wishes do come true, and continues the tradition of the children learning a series of hard and entertaining lessons when things go wrong. Wilson brings Nesbit's classic right up to date, rather than five children from one family we have a fractured family with all the conflicting loyalties and difficult feelings that Wilson writes so deftly about. But there is the same feeling of 'what if' that still enchants.
Wilson reading her own book brings an extra wonderful touch, she is as entertaining a reader as a writer and her love for her character and story is so evident.
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