Book Review: The Fairy Chronicles

// 7.25.07 // Filed under: Link Love

I mentioned in a previous post that I would no longer be doing product reviews on my blog, but that I have a few already promised. I am going to post these reviews over the next day or two, then my posts will be focusing on BlogHer.

The Fairy Chronicles is a series of books about girls that have been “granted a fairy spirit, each one as unique and beautiful as the girls themselves, each as wild and powerful as their counterparts in nature.” I gave these books to a friend of my son’s. She is 7 1/2 years old and homeschooled. Following is her review.

The first book is about a 9 year old girl named Beth. Beth’s Aunt was going to pick her up to spend a few weeks at her house, but Beth didn’t want to go. She wanted to be doing other things instead, like swimming or playing soccer.

Beth’s Aunt drives her to her house and tells her that she (Beth) is a fairy. At first, Beth doesn’t believe her, but her Aunt proves it by showing her how to change into fairy form. Then they meet up with other fairies at a fairy circle, where the Brownies tell them that The Feather of Hope has been taken by a human. A man found the feather and is using it as a bookmark. But there are gremlins living in the man’s house and they can be very mean and capture fairies.

The fairies come up with a plan to get the feather back. By using their fairy handbook, they realize that gremlins are afraid of dashunds. So they go to Beth’s house to get her dashund, “Peanut”, then all go to the man’s house that night. Peanut chases the gremlins while the Brownies find the book with the feather. They exchange it for a bluebird feather.

I liked this book because Beth learned that she was a fairy and could go into the fairy world. I liked their adventures with the Brownies and that everybody was nice to each other.

In book #2, Beth and her friends, who are fairies, meet to find the dream spider because they are all having nightmares. They fly to a fairy circle meeting and then to meet the dream spider, to see if he can help them stop the bad dreams. The spider turns out to be very nice, and helps the fairies to figure out that a goblin, disguised as the Sandman, is the cause of all the bad dreams. In the end, the spider spins a new web for catching the bad dreams.

I liked that Lenox (one of the girls) was homeschooled.

I thought the books were good, and I would like to read more of them.

The mother of the girl who wrote the review above had this to say:

One thing that I thought was interesting was that my daughter said she didn’t like how much the first book emphasized that the main character didn’t like spending time with her family, especially her Aunt… how she would rather be doing other things than going to her Aunt’s house, how she was embarrassed by what her Aunt wore and drove, etc. and how it was all considered not “cool.” As homeschoolers, I don’t think we see as much of this behavior, and it seemed to stand out for my daughter.

I didn’t care for the way the author felt the need to add the attraction between the main character and one of the Brownies. The girls/fairies were sending notes saying things like, “Brownie Alan likes you!”, and teasing the girl/fairy about the whole thing, even going so far as to chant, “Marigold has a boyfriend! Marigold has a boyfriend!” Yes, it might be considered innocent, but the girls are supposed to be 9. I felt the book would have been just as strong without it and that it really wasn’t necessary to the story at all. It was as though the author felt the need to say these things because she was trying to be in touch with what she thought 9 year olds were doing, but I think that drew away from the story and didn’t add to it.

The Fairy Chronicles web site has complimentary crafts, activities and a fairy handbook that will provide hours of fun for readers.

Would you like to win a copy of The Fairy Chronicles? You can win the first two books simply by posting a comment here! I’ll choose a winner at random next week.

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