This is a simple little tale of a group of children who discover a little bit of magic in an old toy soldier. In Eager’s work, magic has fairly strict rules (in Half-Magic, the charm granted any wish–but only in halves), and here the rules work as a kind of companion to the idea that magic can only work if you continue to believe in it (that is, if you start to think of the creatures you are interacting with simply as dolls, they revert to being dolls again). The plot achieves its urgency through a possible problem in the family, but, with a little help, everything can be solved. A little more moralistic and straight-forward than some of his others, but well worth reading–especially if you’ve never tried Eager before.