Backyard Fairies
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From an Ezra Jack Keats Award-winning illustrator comes a magical story that proves fairies are real and they're all around us.
They MUST be. Who else could have braided the dog's hair? Who else could be playing that faint music in the air? And who else could've made those mysterious circles in the grass? So thinks a little girl as she sets out into the woods in her backyard searching for the elusive little creatures. Although readers can see them, as hard as she looks, the fairies are always just out of view for our heroine. In the end, it's clear (to the girl AND to readers) that there is magic all around, even when it's hidden in plain sight.
Lush, multi-textured illustrations bring the woods (and the fairies) to life in this playful read-aloud by Phoebe Wahl. Kids will delight in seeing the fairies hidden in each piece of art and revel in the tricks and games the fairies play on our unsuspecting heroine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even if a person never sees a fairy, isn't searching for them enough? Wahl (Sonya's Chickens) suggests that the answer is yes, pairing a bewitching poem with folksy mixed-media collages. Working in gouache, pencil, and other materials, she creates a landscape dense with vegetation outside a girl's wood-shingled home, perfect for hiding fairies, sprites, and other tiny beings. "Have you ever found, while out on your own.../ A tiny, magical somebody's home?" she begins, as the rosy-cheeked, freckled girl sprawls in the dirt, peering into a hollow stump. Tucked behind a toadstool, for readers' eyes only, sits an elf, puffing on a bubble pipe. Beyond the luscious, lulling verse, a substantial part of the book's enjoyment comes from seeing what the girl does not. "Where are they?!" she wonders during a midnight excursion; a cutaway reveals a subterranean party in full swing just beneath her feet, where small mythical creatures dance, feast, and cavort in pointy hats and petal gowns. Readers are all but certain to take a closer look at their environs for evidence of magic in their midst. Ages 3 7.)
