Half Magic

Author: Edward Eager

First line: It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to four children.

Why you should read this book: When Jane comes across a small coin that looks almost like a nickel stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, it turns out to be the perfect antidote for a long summer, a busy mother, and an authoritarian nursemaid. Whenever one of the family makes a wish touching the coin, it comes true, or rather, half-true: the wish takes you half as far as you want to go, or gives you half as much as you ask for. As the siblings learn to understand and manipulate the coin's power, they find that it has its own agenda, to fix all their problems not with magic, but with love.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Your children are all perfectly clean and obedient little comforts.