Cinders and Sparks 2 – Fairies in the Forest

Lindsey Kelk's Fairies in the Forest is a very silly adventure for 7 year olds about a half-fairy girl, a talking dog and a boy who badly needs the loo.

What happens

Cinders found out a week ago that her mother was a fairy. Since then she has developed magic she cannot control, accidentally brought a roast pig back to life at a royal dinner, been declared a witch by King Picklebottom, and run away from the palace rather than marry a prince she does not want.

Now she is riding through the Dark Forest on Mouse, who is a mouse she turned into a horse by mistake. Sparks the talking dog is up front, thinking about sausages. Hansel is clinging on behind, because he helped himself to a gingerbread cottage that turned out to belong to a real witch, and she took it personally.

They are going to Fairyland to find out who her mother really was. That is the plan, anyway, until Hansel announces he cannot wait ten more minutes.

So Cinders makes a wish, her hands glow gold, a lit path opens through the trees, and they arrive at a sweet little cottage with nobody home. Inside there is one big chair, one medium chair and one little chair. Then one big bed, one medium bed and one little bed.

Your reader will see what is coming about four seconds before the characters do, and that is exactly the joke. When the owners get back in the morning, daddy bear does the roaring while mummy bear stands there saying she cannot believe this is happening again and asking whether anyone checked the lock.

The whole book works like that. Every fairy tale your reader already knows turns up wearing a false nose. The made-up words are lovely to read aloud too, munklepoops and gadzoozles and nobbledizooks, and it is proudly British, all loos and kips and porky-pies.

Meanwhile, back at home, Cinders's stepmother Margery is busy telling the heartbroken prince how shifty her stepdaughter always was, and working out how to move herself and her two daughters into the palace while they are at it. She is an excellent villain because she is not remotely scary, just relentlessly awful.

This is the second Cinders and Sparks book and the first one is not in the library at the moment. That turns out not to matter much. Cinders explains her own situation in the first few pages, because Hansel keeps asking, and the story starts on the road rather than mid-sentence.

What to read next

If they are after another girl who refuses point blank to do the princess thing, try Grilled Cheese and Dragons. Princess Serena would rather be called Princess Pulverizer, wants to be a knight, and is currently being told off for hanging from the ballroom ceiling.