Overview
A fantastical children’s story built around enchantment, family life, impossible transformations, and the comic consequences of magic.
This title is catalogued in Fantasy & Children's. Its reading profile is Medium and Accessible, with themes including childhood, friendship, imagination, magic, family.
One-Page Summary
Melisande is a playful fairy-tale variation on the traditional story of a princess trapped by a magical curse. Melisande becomes the victim of a spell that causes her to grow or shrink in absurd ways, turning her appearance itself into a source of chaos. The story deliberately treats fairy-tale logic as a kind of mischievous machinery. A curse does not necessarily produce a solemn tragedy; it can create practical problems that require clever solutions, persistence, and a willingness to laugh at impossible circumstances. Nesbit’s humor comes from watching the characters respond to magic as if it were an especially inconvenient household problem.
The enchantment also transforms the usual fairy-tale expectations about beauty. If a princess cannot control her size or appearance, then the social rules built around her status become unstable. The adventure is therefore not simply about breaking a spell but about discovering that identity is more than outward form. Nesbit enjoys taking conventions that readers already know—princesses, princes, curses, enchanted objects—and bending them until their hidden assumptions become visible. The result is a compact children’s fantasy that feels light but contains a clever idea at its center: fairy tales often pretend that appearance tells you who someone is, and magic gives Nesbit a way to prove how ridiculous that assumption can become.
Key Themes
Childhood: This title is tagged with childhood as one of its main themes.
Friendship: This title is tagged with friendship as one of its main themes.
Imagination: This title is tagged with imagination as one of its main themes.
Magic: This title is tagged with magic as one of its main themes.
Family: This title is tagged with family as one of its main themes.
Fantasy: This title is tagged with fantasy as one of its main themes.