Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book is the final part of a trilogy of novels that also includes Five Children and It (1902) and the Phoenix and the carpet (1904). At, the children's father, is a journalist, who went abroad to cover the war in Manchuria. The mother went to Madeira to recover from an illness, bringing with her younger brother. The children are living with an elderly nurse who established a boardinghouse in Central London. She lives with a studious Egyptologist who has filled his bedsit with ancient artifacts. Children know the scholar and become friends with him and call him Jimmy. In a shop full of unusual merchandise children find the Psammead. It had been captured by a trapper, who failed to recognize him as a magical being. The terrified creature cannot escape, but it can only grant the wishes of others, not for himself. Using a ruse, the children convince the retailer to sell them the "Mangy old monkey" and liberate their old friend.