Tag Archives: fairies

349U: Specific Edition Flower Fairies of the Garden

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I am looking for the specific edition of a book I read repeatedly as a child. It was a Cicely Mary Barker book, pretty sure it was Flower Fairies of the Garden. It was a small book, with a mostly white cover. I’m not sure the cover illustration. It had to have been published before 1992. It might have been part of a set. The first poem in the book was The Forget-me-not Fairy that begins something like “Where do fairy babies lie/til they’re old enough to fly/here’s a likely place I think/midst these flowers blue and pink”. Other fairies in this edition included Scilla, Geranium, and Sweet Pea. I have purchased at least five different printings of this book, and none has included the forget-me-not fairy. Can you help?

348R: Fairies who paint?

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I am in need of help to find a book from my moms childhood. She was born in the 60s so presumably it’s from anywhere around that time and before.
There are these fairies or elves (or pixies) who paint things the wrong colour – my mom has specifically mentioned fire hydrants and fire trucks. Maybe one naughty one paints them the wrong colour? Can’t be sure. It has very nice illustrations with the look of satisfying brush strokes apparently and is part of the reason she became a painter.
I would love to find it and give it to her for Christmas.

347Q: The World of Fairies – Story Collection

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There is a book from my childhood that was lost when our basement flooded, and while my parents remember it vaguely they don’t have any idea the title or author. Here’s everything I can remember about it — sorry this is quite long!

It was a collection of fairy stories (not fairy tales), and I believe the name had something to do with that fact. A large-format book, almost coffee-table-sized, with gorgeous detailed watercolor illustrations on almost every page. I was born in 1998, and while I’m not sure when we acquired the book, it had to have been before 2008 because I remember reading it when I was quite young.
The book opened with a description of the fairy queen and all of the fairies settling down in a woodland grove for a night full of stories on the full moon. We go around the group of fairies with each of them telling a story, and I think there were pages of transition sometimes between stories, when we would see someone else piping up with a new one. Here are the stories I remember, in no particular order (and some of these that I’ve separated might actually belong to the same story):
  • A parable (possibly within another story?) about an impatient fairy who wants to see a rose bloom before it is ready, so she tears open the petals. The rose is beautiful for a moment, but then its petals fall very soon and it dies, while its more patient and kind sister rose blooms naturally.
  • There is some sort of war between the seasons, and the armies of fairies representing each season come together to fight. I remember particularly the illustration containing all of the winter fairies gathered together, with armor of ice, launching snowballs at their enemies. Much description of each type of fairy– the autumn ones wearing acorn cap helmets, the spring ones clad in flower petals.
  • A fairy from the skies is sent on some sort of quest that involves diving beneath the sea to fetch something– maybe a pearl? She finds all of the underwater fairies very strange and is frightened of them. In the drawings, their faces are very sharp, and I believe they have some fish-like attributes. Even though they are unkind to her at first, eventually she gets what she came for. I think that this story also includes her seeking out each of the seasons, which in this case are personified as beatific humans covered in natural motifs that are relevant to their season.
  • A young fairy who grew up in a bird’s nest, I don’t believe she has wings, and eventually falls from the nest and begins wandering the world. I have forgotten much of this story, but have a vivid memory of the illustration of a will o’ the wisp, drawn as a young, pale boy with a huge shining head. I think the will o’ the wisp at first intends to drown her in the swamp, but she charms him with her storytelling or her singing voice or something similar, and he falls asleep and she leaves in the morning.
  • One about a human girl who believes in fairies, although she’s never seen them. She grows angry and resentful for some reason, and then one day she is outside and sees all of her wickedness grow up around her in a big black wall, illustrated with many little faces making horrible expressions hiding in the wall.
  • I don’t know if this is part of the above story or a separate one, but a human girl who is shrunk down small like a fairy for one day and one night. She learns what a fairy’s life is like, drinks nectar and plays on blades of grass and sleeps in a seedpod. I think there’s a little boat in this one, made of leaves or something.
Anyway, that is pretty much all I can remember. The most striking thing about it was definitely the illustrations, and that all of the stories were completely unique and unlike anything I’ve read since. Let me know if you have any ideas!

344F: YA Fantasy Fae Man With Backwards Bird Feet

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A young female (I think orphan) takes a train to a mansion (orphanage?) with just a suitcase. The master of the house is a man with backwards bird feet. The young girl finds out everyone’s fae and she’s the daughter of powerful fae (king & queen?)

A pair of the fae are twins, I think. There’s a werewolf in the woods…there is some sort of fae event in a tent…I don’t remember anything else.

It was a paperback.

I believe there’s at least a sequel which is why I’m trying to find it.

Not sure when book was set.

Average length book. Maybe 250-300 pages?

English.

I think it was newish when I read it a few years ago and I think the sequel was due out a few years ago but I could be wrong.

Thanks for any help! It’s driving me nuts. I thought it was Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children but started reading that and it’s definitely not it lol.

343C: Picture Book Where Girl builds a Necklace from Natural Objects (It’s in a Foreign Language but perhaps an English version Exists)

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I’m fairly certain the illustrations are collage from painted paper, but it may just be a painting. The girl has either red hair or brown hair, she is naked. She is making a necklace with different items. She gets a gemstone or crystal in a cave. I believe she also collects a pebble, seashell and acorn but I’m not certain on those. I do not know what language the writing is in. I think it was likely German but maybe Swedish or Norwegian something Slavic or Germanic. I think that maybe fairies or gnomes give her the gemstone but that may be just something we made up since we didn’t speak the language. The things I’m certain of are is she goes into a cave, she is naked at least at some point and she is making a necklace.

321X: Fairies in the Forest

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Softcover book of color photographs with fairy-lore text. That is, images are actual unmanipulated photographs but the text relates these to fairies. I am confident it is a book of photographs as well as relating at least some of the photographs to fairies. Other recollections are softer.

321R: Girl Learns Graceful Behavior From Fairy Queen

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There’s a book of fiction about a girl who lives in or near a castle- I seem to remember it won an award- I think I found it at a Scholastic book fair.  This girl is somehow considered badly behaved- and she’s allowed to run wild. She is kidnapped by fairies who live in a huge underground warren (I think under a mountain) to be a servant.  They’re drugged every night with the food that she discovers if she skips, she’s more alert but struggles with claustrophobia. Because of her refusal to eat the drugged food, she catches the interest of the Queen of fairies who teaches her, mostly through humiliation, how to walk and move gracefully. She’s eventually rescued and the fairies are forced into the other world, sealing their mountain.

I can’t find this book at all- My sister claims she never read it and I looked through the books at my parents house without finding it.

299T: Fairies Tattoo Naughty Girl’s Face

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I am looking for a children’s book that was a favorite of mine at my grandma’s house growing up. I’ve been searching for years trying to find what the name of this book was, with no luck. Despite it being fairies, and involving colours, it’s not Andrew Lang.  This is what I remember of it:

It was a hardbound book, blue or green cover, with embossed printing. So probably published prior to 1950s

The story revolved around a little girl who wasn’t very nice, so she is visited by a fairy who’s name is similar to “tintinnabulum” (I remember that very distinctly). This fairy caused a word to appear on the girl’s forehead (possibly the word KIND) that only the girl and the fairies could see; if the girl acted kindly, the word would fade with each kind act, for each unkind act it would grow darker.

The girl was then put in a hall with seven doors, one for each color of the rainbow- she needed to travel through each fairy realm, do deeds that would remove the word on her forehead, and find the door back to the hall. Each of the realms had something to do with the color of the door (Like, the light blue door’s realm was in the sky, and the dark blue was under water).

Eventually she goes through all the doors, the word is gone, and she gets to go back home.