The Magic Fishbone is a funny story by Charles Dickens, an English writer and social critic who created some of the world s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. It is included in Shirley Temple s Storybook which is an American children s anthology series hosted and narrated by actress Shirley Temple and appeared in the fourth book, Shirley Temple s Favorite Tales Of Long Ago which was illustrated and published by Random House in 1958. This is the extraordinary story of a very nearly ordinary princess named Alicia. Given a magic fish-bone by a good fairy, Alicia can have whatever she wishes-provided she wishes for it at the right time. But it s never clear when the right time is, and sometimes the best magic is no magic at all…. This funny and unexpectedly impressive tale reveals a Victorian world that existed nowhere but in the mind of a child.