The Story of the Treasure Seekers

Six Bastable children, whose father's business has failed, set out to restore the fallen fortunes of the house by every method a child can devise: digging for treasure, rescuing a rich person, printing a newspaper, becoming detectives. Nesbit ran a large and chaotic household on what her writing earned and helped found the Fabian Society. The narrator is one of the six and declines to say which, though he gives himself away by the third page. Forty-five paintings from 1785 to 1915, including Munch and Frith, gather children at play and at odds with the adult world, the very scrapes the Bastables stumble through.