Fairy Bell Sisters 04 – Clara and the Magical Charms

Margaret McNamara's Clara and the Magical Charms is a sweet fairy story for 6 year olds about Tinker Bell's eldest little sister, who is just coming into her magic.

What happens

It's Valentine's Week on Sheepskerry Island. Queen Mab turns a snowy meadow into summer, and a crowd of young gnomes sails over from the Outer Islands for the Valentine's Games. (Young gnomes, it turns out, are nothing like the grumpy old ones at the bottom of the garden.)

Clara Bell is the sister everyone relies on. She organises, she checks the homework and she looks after baby Squeak. But she's been secretly practising charms. She can already make a bell ring without touching it and a rose bloom in the snow.

Her first try at a sparkle charm covers a whole hilltop in soot! Her second turns it gold.

The storyteller talks straight to you, which younger readers love. There are little asides in brackets and a moment where the storyteller keeps their fingers crossed that you'll turn the page. It feels like being told a story at bedtime.

There's lots going on. Sylva is desperate to win the Games. Goldie is swooning over a show-off gnome called Alasdair. And Clara finds herself making friends with his kind younger brother Rowan, who can talk to deer and has a brilliant snowball arm.

It's gentle, but it isn't all fluff. Right at the start the storyteller warns that Clara takes on so much she almost risks her life. Queen Mab once told her that the healing charm is very powerful, because "it takes life to heal life". There are a few tense pages because of it.

If your reader worries easily, it helps to know the sisters' love for each other is never far away. There's a lovely scene where Clara races home through the snow, sure something awful has happened, and finds them all toasting marshmallows by the fire.

What to read next

This is the fourth Fairy Bell Sisters book, but the sisters are introduced fresh at the start. If your reader would like to go back to the beginning, Sylva and the Fairy Ball is where Sylva is too young for the ball and does something very naughty about it.