While exploring the environs of their summer home, five brothers and sisters find a Psammead, or Sand-fairy, in a nearby gravel pit: "Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's." The Psammead is magical and, every day, the ancient and irritable creature grants each of them a wish that lasts until sunset. Soon, though, they find their wishes never seem to...

Recent events such as the massacres in Dunblane and Arkansas, the deaths of children in terrorist attacks, civil wars and famines, children born with AIDS, and the many abductions and murders of children - including some by children - have placed childhood death firmly in the public consciousness. But how do we understand what it means for a child to die? This book examines the way the deaths of children have been dealt with at different times and in different media. Each contributor has focused on a different way of representing the deaths of children - from superstitions about malign child...