Fern the Green Fairy

Daisy Meadows' Fern the Green Fairy is a leafy fairy adventure for 5 year olds, with a hedge maze, a frozen oak tree and a ride on a squirrel's back.

What happens

Rachel and Kirsty are spending their holiday on Rainspell Island, hunting for the seven Rainbow Fairies. Jack Frost has sent them away from Fairyland, and it's lost all its colour without them. Three sisters are safe already. Fern is next.

Today it's a family picnic in an old secret garden. There's a crumbling stone tower that looks just like Rapunzel's, and a patch of ivy that's grown in a perfect circle.

Then Rachel sits down on some moss and gets green dust all over her skirt. It sparkles. It smells of cut grass. It's fairy dust! (She's very pleased she sat on it.)

A trail of tiny leaves leads them through an orchard and right into a maze. In the middle is an oak tree with a little window in its trunk. Except it isn't glass. It's ice, and Fern is stuck behind it.

The girls melt it with their own warm hands. Then the goblins come stomping through the maze, arguing as usual. One of them has very big feet (and the other one won't let him forget it).

So Fern shrinks the girls to fairy size, and suddenly the acorns are as big as beach balls. A leaf makes a hiding place the size of a tablecloth. Can you imagine being small enough to hide under one?

The best bit is Fluffy the squirrel. The girls win him over with an acorn, then climb on his back and he bounds from hedge to hedge right over the goblins' heads. A hedgehog rolls himself into a ball and trips the goblins up. "OW! My toes!"

It's full of the magic little ones dream about, and it's very gentle with it. The goblins are grumpy and noisy, but mostly they bicker.

You'll spot a few American words as you go (mom, vacation, color), because the library holds the American edition.

Fern is fourth of the seven Rainbow Fairies, so three of her sisters are already found before it starts. It makes sense by itself, but go back to Ruby the Red Fairy if you'd like them all in order.

What to read next

If talking animals and a shrinking spell are the bits they love, try Lucy Longwhiskers Gets Lost. Two best friends go through a little door in an oak tree, shrink, and find a whole forest of animals who walk and talk.