After Philip's older sister and sole family member Helen marries, he goes off to live with his new step sister Lucy. He has trouble adjusting at first, thrown into a world different from his previous life and abandoned by his sister while she is on her honeymoon. To entertain himself he builds a giant model city..... Day after day Philip goes on with his building, putting into it almost everything you can think of. He makes steps of the dominoes, and a terrace of the domino-box. He gets bits of wood from the garden to stick into cotton-reels, which make lovely pots -- and the results look like ornamental trees in tubs. Brass finger-bowls serve for domes -- and the lids of brass kettles and coffee-pots make minarets of dazzling splendour It is a city -- a fabulous, exotic, miniature city Just to look upon it seemed magical enough -- but even Philip had no clue just how magical it might turn out to be. Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) is considered the first to write fantasy for children with a modern sensibility, giving inspiration to such others as Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis.