Edward wants to fly more than anything. His dream seems set to come true when he encounters a salesman from the Eureka Lucky Wish Company. (“Buy Two. Get One Free.”) Edward buys three wishes, but, like every other fairy-tale hero before him, he manages to squander each of them on something trivial or not-quite-perfect.

Sadly, this book, too, is not quite perfect. Barbara Todd’s story moves quickly and takes some interesting left-turns along the way. There is no way to anticipate what might happen next, and that in itself will be enough to hold many young readers’ attention. At times, though, the pace feels too frenetic, and one longs for a road map to reveal where we are heading on this frantic ride. The use of made-up words like “splurchler,” “figgler,” and “bog bubbler” will either delight or irritate readers, depending on their tolerance for such things.

The pen-and-ink illustrations by Patricia Storms are amusing (especially the hilarious Boston terrier that appears by Edward’s side on almost every page). Storms’s background as a comic illustrator comes through in the cartoony style, which suits the whimsical tone of the text. But overall, the marriage of text and pictures is not a happy one. In many places, what we read does not fit with what we see on the page, and the reader is forced to flip back through the pages to figure out what just happened. This is especially problematic in a story with so much going on.

It’s hard to avoid the comparison: Edward and the Eureka Lucky Wish Company zooms forward and falls flat, much like the red bike at the beginning of the book that Edward wants to turn into a flying machine. And like Edward’s bike, when it does take off, it tends to leave the rest of us behind.