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!