The Fairies of Honeysuckle Hollow

December 15, 2019
Earn fairy wings through kindness and love. An unnamed narrator depicted as a white girl in a dress goes into the forest and finds a fairy named Lily, a dark-skinned girl with pointed ears and wings like a stained-glass dragonfly's. One wing is broken, and she's lost her key to Honeysuckle Hollow, where the fairies dwell. The child helps Lily search while also assisting Lily in her horticultural duties. Eventually they find the key, which is near the door to the hollow. Invited inside, the protagonist shrinks to fit, and the two new friends join the ethnically diverse fairies' celebration. The Fairy Queen, who has tan skin and black hair, thanks the child for selflessly helping Lily with a pair of "earned" shimmering, butterfly-shaped fairy wings. The "Fairy Code" ends the book, promoting kindness, care of nature, and friendship. This story is contemporary fairy fodder, adequate for young readers eagerly devouring anything they can find but adding nothing new to the collection. The mediocre, first-person verse maneuvers clauses to fit its rhyme scheme: "Her name was Lily--she was from a land most don't know. / A forest that's called Honeysuckle Hollow." The sweet and delicate pictures, created digitally, are pastel-heavy and feature items derived from plants, like petal-and-leaf fairy clothing or stem wands. Each spread contains scattered sparkles to add that omnipresent magical feeling. Sparkling, shimmering, saccharine. (Picture book. 3-7)

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