“‘The bold captain, reproving the silly chatter of his subordinates-” The oldest of the three siblings, Gerald, has the annoying (to his brother and sister) and endearing (to me) habit of narrating their adventures as they are living them: But ah well.ĭespite that, I did like the narrator, and I liked the characters even more. Unfortunately, later on the narrator makes several remarks about how very shameful it is for boys to cry, and this was especially disappointing for me because of the expectations that initial comment had created. I am happy to say that the latter happened with this book.įor example, in the very first page of the story, there was an observation that made me like the narrator right away: “And they were at school in a little town in the West of England – the boys at one school, of course, and the girls at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope It will be one day.”Considering that the book was originally published in 1907, I thought this was quite an interesting comment.

They can either annoy me or they can draw me in and make me feel like I’m being told a story by a benevolent and good-humoured figure. Among the things they come across are magic rings that make the wearer invisible, but to which there is more than meets the eye (yes!), secret identities, secret passages, dinosaurs, Ugly-Wuglies, statues that come alive in the moonlight, Greek gods and goddesses, and much, much more.īooks with the kind of narrator The Enchanted Castle has – the conversational kind, who addresses the reader and interrupts the story with little observations – can go both ways for me. But when they come across what seems to be a sleeping princess at the centre of a maze, a series of unbelievable things begin to happen, and what was shaping up to be a peaceful summer turns out to be a very adventurous one. When spending a summer under the care of a French governess, the children discover a tunnel that leads to a castle, and decide to pretend that the castle is enchanted. The Enchanted Castle is the story of three siblings, Gerald, Jimmy and Katherin, and of their friend Mabel.

The enchanted castle nesbit