Fairy Handbook

March 21, 2011
This quirky introduction to fairies explores the creatures' origins (a girl who grew wings following the death of a beloved butterfly), habits, celebrations, abilities, and types. Carretero's fairies are pretty, blush easily, have gangly legs and wide eyes, and can affect human behavior. Readers looking for information drawn from traditional fairy lore may be disappointed: Carretero's pronouncements feel rather off-the-cuff (her two-winged fairies "fly like birds over fields and cities," while three-winged fairies fly "in a slightly wobbly, zigzagging way"). The translation from Spanish is not seamless, with awkward phrasing, odd punctuation, and outdated terms like Oriental and Eskimo. Still, the fairy-obsessed should be diverted. Available simultaneously: Pirate Handbook. Ages 5â7.

March 15, 2011

"Do fairies exist? The answer is a definite, energetic, resounding and unquestionable Yes." Suggesting that anyone who has ever felt inexplicably grumpy, happy, scatterbrained, loving or giggly has been influenced by a particular kind of fairy, Carretero proceeds to catalog fairy types, habitats (country fairies have "hot pollen for breakfast" and do "complicated yoga exercises") and yearly celebrations. An album at the end provides six pages of fairy types (kissy-kissy, bubbly, brainy—in glasses, natch—etc.), and the book concludes with a few fairy activities. Showing a fondness for bright flowers and checkerboard patterns, she illustrates the tour with luminous watercolor scenes featuring gatherings of wide-eyed winged girls (all fairies being "half girl and half insect") with extra-long pipestem limbs flitting gracefully about a range of urban and rural settings. Next to Sally Gardner's more clever and comprehensive Fairy Catalogue (2001) this comes off as sweet fare, but thin—and the single-page multicultural fairy gallery includes some stereotyping, with a German fairy identified by the sausage at the end of her wand and an omnibus "Oriental" fairy next to others from specific countries. Like its diminutive subjects, easy to miss. (Picture book. 7-9)

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