More cheerful Edwardian romps with the Bastable kids, this time in the Kent countryside. You can tell that E Nesbit was also a writer of quite scary ghost stories for adults here. It comes through in "The Tower of Mystery", halfway up which someone was entombed. You can't see him now, but once there was only glass round him... "Hunting the Fox" is a bit macabre too, and "The Dragon's Teeth" mentions skeletons twice in a jokey-scarey way.
A good example of her adult ghost stories is "Mansize in Marble".

This is the sequel to Nesbit's Story of the Treasure Seekers, following the adventures of the six Bastable children. Trying to learn from the various scrapes they got into in the first novel, they form a society named in recognition of their desire to do good deeds and not be naughty. Needless to say, despite their determination, their efforts go wrong and through numerous silly and amusing misunderstandings they usually manage to annoy or inconvenience people, and in one case cause a serious flood that damages their home. The narrator is once again the elder boy Oswald who reports his and his siblings' and friends' doings in the third person. Being earnest, clever but inexperienced children they make intelligent mistakes - for example, an eight sided tower "Denny says it is the shape called octogenarian; because a man named Octagius invented it". Light hearted and amusing, though this is not one of my favourites of hers. ( )

Didn't really get into it

One of her non-magical tales, a sequel to the [b:Treasue Seekers|444374|The Story of the Treasure Seekers (Bastable Children, #1)|E. Nesbit|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327884696s/444374.jpg|1963787] which i havn't read. The narration was quite confusing at first, apparently in the previous book its explained that the narrator is supposed to be a mystery.

A group of children are sent to the country and decide to try being extra good as they're always getting into trouble. Leading to the kind of chaos you would expect. By the half-way point my inner adult was getting quite annoyed but the author seemed to sense this too and the kids are less destructive in the second half.

Its well written but almost feels like a script at times, like it would work better as a film than it does on the page, bit hard to explain. I alternated between listening on Librivox and reading it and i think it was more designed to be listened too.
The Librivox recording is also done randomly by a man and woman, possibly due to the narrator mystery but it works well. ( )

Continuing the series about the Bastable children is The Wouldbegoods, in which the children discover that having money again and living in their Indian Uncle's fancy house in town does not make them automatically desire to be good.

I didn't find this nearly as much fun as The Treasure-Seekers. The latter carried on the often amusing conceit that the narrator was anonymous, although Oswald outed himself near the end, as if the reader hadn't already known after a couple of paragraphs. Still, he did come out and admit it – which makes it somewhat trying that the same conceit is carried on here.

It's a bit funny to read (listen to) this almost immediately after The Railway Children. That set of kids was well-intentioned, good-hearted, and heroic; this lot is much more lawless and self-absorbed. The very name "Wouldbegoods" is a sign of it: they realize that they are prone to petty criminality as the sparks fly upward, and the two "prissy" girls, Dora and Daisy, propose to form a club to try to improve themselves.

It doesn't go terribly well.

I hate to say it, being as he (along with his creator) is a birthday-twin, but … I don't like Oswald Bastable in this. He was somewhat endearing in his pompous yet insecure self-praise in TTS, but here he and one or two of the others seem to have a bit more of a mean streak, or perhaps simply carelessness. Oswald will go far, though, with his attributes – or end up hanged.

I think part of it was that I missed Albert's Uncle in The Wouldbegoods - hey! Where did his beloved go? And why did I only just think of that? Hm. Anyway. I loved Albert's Uncle in The Treasure Seekers, but while he was nominally the adult in charge here he was locked up in his room writing a great deal. Rather more than might have been wise given the amount of close supervision these children require. Without him, there is less of the second-hand, through-the-lens-of-Oswald's-POV adult reaction which made Treasure Seekers so priceless.

I think that's a big part of why the constant string of incidents wore a bit thinner in The Wouldbegoods than in Treasure Seekers: it very soon becomes don't these kids ever learn? combined with Oswald at least must be old enough to know better by now. But they haven't, and he doesn't, and there goes the pig galloping down the road while the sheep vanish in the opposite direction. The one certainty in any given chapter is that there will be breakage.

Wouldbegoods is still miles better than most of what's put out today, as far as I've seen; it's still great fun. So: not my favorite, but still – E. Nesbit. That counts for a great deal. ( )