The Wouldbegoods

The Bastable children are back, and they've learned nothing. Well, nearly nothing. After yet another household disaster involving the family's possessions and truly remarkable chaos, Uncle Cosmo tells them they look like 'jam scattered about' - and something actually sticks. The children decide to reform. They form the Wouldbegoods, a Society for Being Good, and pack off to the countryside Moat House where adventure surely awaits. The problem is that their definitions of 'good' and 'helpful' don't quite align with adult expectations. Every good deed explodes in their faces. Every attempt at kindness becomes a catastrophe. Yet somehow these earnest failures become the most wonderful adventures imaginable. E. Nesbit understood something essential about children: their absolute conviction that they are being helpful while the world crumbles around them, their inability to see why anyone would find any of this amusing. Oswald narrates with complete childlike seriousness, and that's precisely what makes it funny. For readers who loved The Story of the Treasure Seekers, or anyone who remembers what it felt like to be certain you were doing the right thing while everything went wrong.