{"product_id":"2940013863149","title":"THE STORY OF THE AMULET","description":"CONTENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     1.  The Psammead\u003cbr\u003e     2.  The Half Amulet\u003cbr\u003e     3.  The Past\u003cbr\u003e     4.  Eight Thousand Years Ago\u003cbr\u003e     5.  The Fight in the Village\u003cbr\u003e     6.  The Way to Babylon\u003cbr\u003e     7.  'The Deepest Dungeon Below the Castle Moat'\u003cbr\u003e     8.  The Queen in London\u003cbr\u003e     9.  Atlantis\u003cbr\u003e     10. The Little Black Girl and Julius Caesar\u003cbr\u003e     11. Before Pharaoh\u003cbr\u003e     12. The Sorry-Present and the Expelled Little Boy\u003cbr\u003e     13. The Shipwreck on the Tin Islands\u003cbr\u003e     14. The Heart's Desire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 1. THE PSAMMEAD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a white\u003cbr\u003ehouse, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day they\u003cbr\u003ehad the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes\u003cbr\u003ewere on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out\u003cbr\u003elike telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was\u003cbr\u003eshaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur--and it had hands\u003cbr\u003eand feet like a monkey's. It told the children--whose names were\u003cbr\u003eCyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane--that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy.\u003cbr\u003e(Psammead is pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and its\u003cbr\u003ebirthday was almost at the very beginning of everything. And it had\u003cbr\u003ebeen buried in the sand for thousands of years. But it still kept its\u003cbr\u003efairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to give\u003cbr\u003epeople whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been able\u003cbr\u003eto do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their wishes come\u003cbr\u003etrue; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things to\u003cbr\u003ewish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. In\u003cbr\u003ethe end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called 'a very\u003cbr\u003etight place indeed', and the Psammead consented to help them out of it\u003cbr\u003ein return for their promise never never to ask it to grant them any more\u003cbr\u003ewishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because it did not want to\u003cbr\u003ebe bothered to give wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment of\u003cbr\u003eparting Jane said politely--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'I wish we were going to see you again some day.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the Psammead, touched by this friendly thought, granted the wish.\u003cbr\u003eThe book about all this is called Five Children and It, and it ends up\u003cbr\u003ein a most tiresome way by saying--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The children DID see the Psammead again, but it was not in the sandpit;\u003cbr\u003eit was--but I must say no more--'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe reason that nothing more could be said was that I had not then been\u003cbr\u003eable to find out exactly when and where the children met the Psammead\u003cbr\u003eagain. Of course I knew they would meet it, because it was a beast of\u003cbr\u003eits word, and when it said a thing would happen, that thing happened\u003cbr\u003ewithout fail. How different from the people who tell us about what\u003cbr\u003eweather it is going to be on Thursday next, in London, the South Coast,\u003cbr\u003eand Channel!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe summer holidays during which the Psammead had been found and\u003cbr\u003ethe wishes given had been wonderful holidays in the country, and the\u003cbr\u003echildren had the highest hopes of just such another holiday for the next\u003cbr\u003esummer. The winter holidays were beguiled by the wonderful happenings\u003cbr\u003eof The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the loss of these two treasures would\u003cbr\u003ehave left the children in despair, but for the splendid hope of their\u003cbr\u003enext holiday in the country. The world, they felt, and indeed had some\u003cbr\u003ereason to feel, was full of wonderful things--and they were really the\u003cbr\u003esort of people that wonderful things happen to. So they looked forward\u003cbr\u003eto the summer holiday; but when it came everything was different, and\u003cbr\u003every, very horrid. Father had to go out to Manchuria to telegraph news\u003cbr\u003eabout the war to the tiresome paper he wrote for--the Daily Bellower,\u003cbr\u003eor something like that, was its name. And Mother, poor dear Mother, was\u003cbr\u003eaway in Madeira, because she had been very ill. And The Lamb--I mean the\u003cbr\u003ebaby--was with her. And Aunt Emma, who was Mother's sister, had suddenly\u003cbr\u003emarried Uncle Reginald, who was Father's brother, and they had gone to\u003cbr\u003eChina, which is much too far off for you to expect to be asked to spend\u003cbr\u003ethe holidays in, however fond your aunt and uncle may be of you.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47145906274544,"sku":"2940013863149","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013863149_p0.jpg?v=1763596336","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013863149","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}