Izzy the Indigo Fairy

Daisy Meadows' Izzy the Indigo Fairy is a Rainbow Magic adventure for 5 year olds where a rainy day indoors turns into a trip inside a book of fairy tales.

What happens

It's pouring on Rainspell Island. Rachel and Kirsty are stuck in Rachel's little attic bedroom, and today they're meant to be finding a missing fairy.

So they pull a big dusty book off the shelf. Its cover is a deep purplish-blue. Then the pages start to glow!

The snowy forest in one of the pictures isn't just a picture. Snowflakes swirl out into the bedroom and the girls are swept right into the story of The Nutcracker. (The snow turns out to be powdered sugar, which goes down very well.)

This is the Land of Sweets. There are marshmallow houses, a road paved with jelly beans, gingerbread men in smart bow ties and elves who make ice cream. Who wouldn't want to go?

The clues are fun to spot too. A gingerbread man's red bow tie has turned indigo, and a little elf comes running up with a stained tongue after a drink from the lemonade fountain.

The fairy behind it all is a cheeky one. She's the reason the lemonade has changed colour, she's napped on that bow tie, and the whole village is cross with her. Then two of Jack Frost's goblins come chasing a runaway barrel down the street, and the girls need a plan.

That plan is VERY silly and rather clever (it involves a LOT of jelly beans). The goblins are much more greedy than frightening, so it's exciting without being scary for little ones.

One thing to know. The copy in the library is the American edition, so the fairy is called Inky all the way through. The UK books call her Izzy, which is the name on this page. You'll also spot words like "vacation" and "candy".

It's the sixth of the seven Rainbow Fairies books and the hunt carries straight on from the earlier ones. The first few pages explain what's going on, but it's probably best read in order.

What to read next

If this is your reader's first Rainbow Magic book, go back to Ruby the Red Fairy. That's where Rachel and Kirsty meet on the ferry and find an old black pot sitting at the end of a rainbow.