THE STORY OF THE TREASURE SEEKERS – E. Nesbit

I don’t remember when I first discovered author Edith Nesbit, but I do remember being surprised at how much I enjoyed her writing. At the time, I considered ‘classics’ to be slow and dull reading – good for teaching but not for enjoyment. But there’s a very good reason that these books are still around and keep getting reprinted – they are just plain good stories!

This is the story of the Bastable children – Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius (H. O.) Bastable. Their mother has died recently and their father’s business has failed. Their father, despite his profound sadness at the loss of his wife, is determined to do the best he can for his children and to keep their spirits up. But the children recognize that their father has fallen on hard times and decide that they should help father by making some money. Of course, their interest is sincere but they approach this the way almost any child would … looking for ways to make good money, quickly.

With childhood aplomb the Bastable children decide that publishing a newspaper must be lucrative and so take on the task of publishing their own paper with each of the children responsible for writing a section of the paper. But with hours of work they don’t manage to sell too many papers and so they move on to another means to raise some money for their father.

This book really captures the sense of childhood innocence and ingenuity. Reading it today we see that people, children, haven’t changed much in the past century.

Do your children a favor and pick up this reprint and read a chapter a night to them as they go to bed.

Looking for a good book? The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit is a classic children’s book that still deserves to be read to children and should be on every literate family’s bookshelf.