Five children find a fairy at the beach who grants wishes, though with surprising consequences.
This is the archetypal children and magic story. Unless there's an earlier one.
I wish I'd read them earlier, but I didn't read Nesbit's books until I was in high school. This was the first one I read and I loved it. The children are refreshingly normal. They bicker, they make mistakes, they are tender but also sometimes selfish. I found later that that is a hallmark of Nesbit'...