'Life's Little Ironies ' Summary

This is the middle volume of a trilogy that begins with Five Children and It and concludes with The Story of the Amulet. It deviates from the other two novels insofar as it includes only a brief mention of the Psammead, a magical creature introduced in the first volume, and depicts the five children as living with both of their parents in the family home in London. In the other two volumes, circumstances have forced the children to spend protracted periods away from their home and their father. A continuing theme throughout The Phoenix and the Carpet is the element of fire.

The story begins shortly before 5 November, celebrated in Britain as Guy Fawkes Night, when people build bonfires and set off fireworks. The four children have accumulated a small hoard of fireworks for the night, but they are too impatient to wait until 5 November to light them, so they set off a few samples in the nursery. This results in the fire that destroys the original carpet. To replace it their parents purchase a second-hand carpet, which is found to contain an egg that emits a phosphorescent glow. The children accidentally knock the egg into the fire, whereupon it hatches, revealing a golden talking Phoenix.

It develops that this is a magic carpet that can transport the children anywhere they wish in the present time, although it is capable of satisfying only three wishes a day. Accompanied by the Phoenix, the children have exotic adventures. There is one moment of terror when the youngest, the baby known as the Lamb, crawls onto the carpet, babbles incoherently and vanishes, but it turns out that the Lamb only desires to be with his mother.

At a few points in the novel, the children find themselves in predicaments from which the Phoenix is unable to rescue them by himself, so he goes to find the Psammead and has a wish granted for the children's sake. In addition, at the end the carpet is sent to ask the Psammead to grant the Phoenix's wish. These offstage incidents are the only contributions made by the Psammead to this story.