And Jane didn’t have any idea how much she had or how to use it, and this made her unhappy.”īefore they figure out how to use the magic, the children get the benefit of their mother’s experience (she takes the magic coin with her-for that is what it is–and when she wishes she were home, she ends up half-way home). But in order to enjoy that tingling, you have to know just how much magic you have and what the rules are for using it. The narrator explains that “when you have magic powers and know it, it can be a fine feeling, like a pleasant tingling inside. “Don’t!” Katharine almost screamed, and Jane turned white, shut her lips tight, and started walking faster. “Is Jane magic?” Martha whispered to Katharine. The first thing Jane wishes, before she knows her wishes will come half-true, is for some excitement, but after the excitement it’s scary: The rules are fairly simple and part of the fun is seeing the children figure out how they work.

Grocery store ordering clearly does not work by the rules of Half Magic. After two weeks of getting half of what I’d asked for, I asked for twice as much as I needed and then got all of it. But then one week, ordering twice as much as I needed did not produce the hoped-for half magic I got almost as much as I’d ordered. So then I tried ordering different brands with different percentages of milkfat and twice as much as I needed and ended up getting almost enough. The demand for grocery pickup times has eased to the point where I no longer have to make use of my periodic insomnia to reserve a time, but I’ve begun to think of ordering as learning to use Half Magic, as in the book by Edward Eager.įor a few weeks it was hard to get lactose-free milk when I ordered one I got zero.

Half magic the book