The Story of the Amulet

The Story of the Amulet is a novel for children by the English writer Edith Nesbit, published in 1906 and the last of the three books that begin with Five Children and It.

Robert, Anthea, Cyril and Jane are staying in central London while their father reports on a war overseas and their mother recovers from an illness, and their landlady's only other lodger is a shy scholar surrounded by relics. The Psammead, the sand fairy they met in the country, can no longer grant wishes, but it can explain the amulet they find, which opens doors into the past. The children use it to visit ancient Egypt, Babylon and Atlantis and to look for the missing half of the charm, and the historical set pieces are mixed in with the ordinary business of meals and of minding the Lamb, their small brother. Nesbit writes them as quarrelsome, curious and largely unimpressed by what they see.

The book closes the sequence that includes Five Children and It and The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the Psammead returns for it.