Gettin' Down and Dirty! Bloom by Doreen Cronin

ONCE UPON A TIME
IN A BEAUTIFUL GLASS KINGDOM
THERE LIVED AN UNUSUAL FAIRY NAMED BLOOM.

HER BOOTS WERE CAKED WITH MUD. BEETLES RESTED IN HER HAIR.

BLOOM'S MAGIC COULD SPIN WIND INTO GLASS, TURN WEEDS INTO BLOSSOMS, AND GROW TRICKLES OF RAINWATER INTO RACING RIVERS.

That was all well and good with the King and Queen and their snooty court, but Bloom's untidy appearance and sloppy working environment--messy buckets of mud leaving untidy trails about the landscape--did not sit well within the royals's lovely crystal city. Mud here and there definitely spoiled the upscale ambiance.

AS THE YEARS PASSED AND THE KINGDOM BECAME LARGER AND SHINIER, THE PEOPLE CARED LESS AND LESS ABOUT BLOOM'S MAGIC AND NOTICED ONLY THE MESS.

Apparently the rulers of the crystal kingdom were unfamiliar with the old proverb that said, "To make an omelet, you must first break some eggs!"

There is a palace revolt and poor Bloom, mess and all, is banished from the crystal city and flees into the forest, where she finds a happy place to continue her magic.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones! And kings and queens who live in glass castles shouldn't cast aspersions on fairies, either. Fairies can have dirty tricks up their gossamer sleeves. Slowly the city loses its pristine sparkle. The glass castle acquires ghastly cracks. The river dries up, and with it the beautiful flowers and trees that had graced the grounds.

THE CASTLE WAS HELD TOGETHER BY DUCT TAPE, GLUE, AND PEASANTS.

At first the King goes a progress into the forest to find Bloom, but is put off by her proffered bucket of mud. So he sends Genevieve, a self-effacing chambermaid whose only task is polishing the Queen's crystal sugar spoon, whom he hopes will have more luck. Bloom is bemused and queries why such a small and delicate emissary has been sent to her for help.

"BECAUSE I AM ORDINARY!" ANSWERED GENEVIEVE.

Her answer pleases the down-to-earth fairy, and Bloom sets to work, teaching Genevieve the lost art of molding her beloved mud into sturdy bricks, and together they build a strong and beautiful house in the forest. The royals are impressed with what a messy fairy and an un-ordinary girl can do, and they are invited back to the kingdom to teach the subjects to get down and dirty, building a solid city of bricks and learning the value of toil in the soil.

In a departure from her popular stories of comical animals, Doreen Cronin's latest, Bloom (Atheneum Books, 2016) is a parable of appearance vs. reality, with a lesson in civic responsibility starring two extra-ordinary girls. Caldecott winner David Small contributes comic light and airy-as-a-fairy watercolor illustrations, with a freckle-faced, red-haired heroine of a fairy who teaches a lesson in sensible cooperation with a bright grin, assisted by a design that uses assorted fonts, even Gothic capitals, to add a spritely lift to this modern fairy story. Publisher's Weekly gives Cronin's newest a starred review, calling it a "...smart, subversive fairy tale."

Cronin's works include the best-selling series begun with Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, and David Small's Caldecott honors include So You Want to Be President?, The Gardener (Caldecott Honor Award), and One Cool Friend. (See review here).

For Pinkanistas ONLY! Camilla the Cupcake Fairy by Tim Bugbird

It's Camilla's fifth birthday and the Pink Fairy Post has just delivered her special present.

She tore off the paper and giggled with glee.
"A wand!" cried Camilla. "And meant just for me!"

It was so shiny and sparkly and new!

Her very first wand. But what did it do?

But it seems fairy wands don't come with instruction books, and Camilla is forced to proceed by trial and error. And there's a lot of error.

Does it clean up her room? Does it produce a ball where she can dance all night? Produce a stage extravaganza in which Camilla is the star?

Well, NO.

Then Camilla gets the message: this wand's special powers can put the frosting on a cake. Well, okay, thinks Camilla. I can go with that.

So Camilla becomes a cupcake-decorating class of one. But her first tries are not exactly what she wants. Her first cake has a live mouse for a topping. Camilla concentrates on luscious icing and her results begin to improve--mashed potatoes? SNOW? Close, but no cigar!

"This just isn't right.
My wand isn't working. I'll be here all night."

When your birthday wand isn't conjuring up the birthday confection of your dreams, who ya gonna call? Why, your two best best friends for a little group think and teamwork session, and with Molly and Maya to help, guess what?

The best-ever cupcake was there at their feet!

Tim Bugbird and illustrator Lara Ede go all out with the pink ink and glitter print in this super sugary little confection of a picture book, Camilla, the Cupcake Fairy (Make Believe Ideas, 2011). For hard-core pinkanistas who are into fairies and cupcakes and a liberal dousing of fairy dust, this one should more than satisfy the sweet tooth.

Enchanted! Leprechaun In Late Winter by Mary Pope Osborne

"Inspire her? What does that mean?" asked Jack.

"'Tis a beautiful word," said Kathleen, her sea-blue eyes sparkling. "It means to breathe life into a person's heart, to make her feel joyful to be alive."

Book #43 of her best-selling Magic Tree House series, Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House #43: Leprechaun in Late Winter (A Stepping Stone Book(TM), finds Jack and Annie once more on a Merlin Mission, in which, counselled by magical assistants Teddy and Kathleen, the two are dispatched to convince young artists, as yet unaware of their unique powers, to use their blessed gifts to bring joy to the world. Having restored the petulant young Mozart's joy in his music and revealed his destiny to the ragtag delivery boy Louis Armstrong, Annie and Jack now find themselves in the Ireland of 1862, equipped only with a magic whistle and the charge to convince an unhappy young girl that she has much to give to the cultural life of Ireland.

When the two time travelers climb down from their magic tree house, they find themselves knocking on the door of a "Big House," where the landed gentry live in far greater comfort than their impoverished Irish neighbors. There, the young Augusta is unhappy with the dull prospects of a lady of the rural nobility and is devoting her energy to helping the poor. Although she loves the Irish tales of fairies and leprechauns than her Irish nursemaid Mary Sheridan had told her as a child, the rational teenager despairs of ever seeing "the Shee," the wee legendary folk of Ireland, and finds the limited role of a proper young lady of her station totally uninspiring.

Enter Jack and Annie, armed with only Merlin's magical instrument, transformed into a silver pipe which Annie plays while Jack improvises a song that gives Augusta the power to see and speak with the Shee. Taken by the fairy folk to their secret redoubt, young Augusta suddenly learns her own mission from their Queen:

"I am Queen Aine of the Shee. This boy said you love stories--and that you remember every word. Is this true?"

Augusta nodded.

"Go home now with your friends, human child." said the Fairy Queen. "Go back for our sake. Seek out the old story-tellers and ask them to tell you the tales of my people. Learn the old language. Read the old manuscripts. Write our stories down and share them before they are lost completely."

Inspired and energized by what she has seen with Jack and Annie, Augusta goes on to become Lady Augusta Gregory, founder, with poet William Butler Yeats, of the Irish National Theatre, and famed conservator of Celtic language and literature.

As always, Osborne pairs her latest in the series with its own Magic Tree House Research Guide #21: Leprechauns and Irish Folklore: A Nonfiction Companion to Leprechaun in Late Winter (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)), written by the author and her sister Natalie Pope Boyce for the use of teachers and parents in broadening the educational use of these time-travel adventures in the exploration of historical and cultural correlations. While there are many exciting, well-written fantasies out there, few combine the love of human history with appealing adventures for the early elementary reader as well as do the marvelous and varied Magic Tree House books.

Ella Cinders Goes to the Ball: Ella's Big Chance by Shirley Hughes

A friend of mine once remarked that there were really only about five stories in the world, all told in infinite variations, and if she's right, the Cinderella story has to one of them.

Shirley Hughes, one of Britain's most celebrated author-illustrators, has an elegant turn on this classic motif, in her award-winning Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella (Kate Greenaway Medal (Awards)). Set in a British city during the Roaring Twenties, it tells the tale of Ella Cinders. the motherless daughter of Mr. Cinders, owner of a chic dress shop which prospers from his stylish designs and Ella's peerless dressmaking skills. The third member of their staff is their doorman and delivery boy Buttons, who is the plump and pretty red-haired Ella's chief admirer.

But when Mr. Cinders takes a new wife, a slim and chic widow with two languid, willowy daughters, Ella definitely takes a demotion. Forced to sleep in the basement cutting room with only an old gray cat for company and made to work long hours over her sewing machine, Ella is relegated to virtual sweat shop labor by her callous stepsisters, who call her "Pudge" and "Carrots," and laze about, slouching elegantly, as they model Ella's creations.

When their most important client, the Duchess of Arc, invites the family to attend a party for her eligible bachelor son, the Duke of Arc, the stepmother and her daughters, Ruby and Pearl, insist on original couture from Ella's needle, but Ella herself is not allowed to accompany them.

Just as Buttons is about to console the tearful Ella with a fry-up of bacon and eggs, a strange woman carrying a fancy umbrella appears at the door of the shop.

"I am your fairy godmother," she told Ella, briskly peeling off her gloves. "It's my job to see that you go to the ball, so let's not waste time."

Transforming Buttons' delivery bike into a sleek limousine and the old gray cat into the chauffeur, with a wave of her umbrella the Fairy Godmother transfigures Ella's old black dress into a light and slimming silver beaded gown which shows off Ella's curves entrancingly. At the ball, of course, the Duke has eyes for no one but her.

Ella finds that she is not in the least overawed by him. They chat and laugh as they glide and spin, two-step, quick-step, fox-trot, and tango in perfect time together.

As expected, midnight comes all too soon, and hastily leaving one slipper behind, Ella jumps into her limousine just before it is re-transformed back into Buttons' old bike. In her dowdy black dress, Ella pushes the bike back to the shop alone, since "the cat, refusing a lift in the basket, stalked off crossly into the night, to make his own way home."

The classic happy ending seems inevitable when the Duke, clutching Ella's lost slipper, finally turns up to try it on the ladies of the Cinders' household. Although he takes the shabbily dressed Ella for a servant, she somehow seems familiar, and when her foot slips easily into the shoe, the handsome Duke of Arc urges her to come away with him immediately to announce their engagement.

"No," said Ella slowly. "Thank you very much, Duke, but no, I'm sorry--I can't. You see, I love someone else."

Yes, it's the faithful Buttons who has won Ella's hand and heart, and soon they depart, laughing and wobbling a bit on his old bicycle, gray cat in the basket, to start up their own posh little dress shop, watched unobserved, as we see, by a smiling woman with a fancy umbrella.

"When we are married," says Buttons, "you may not live like a duchess, but you will eat like a queen. You never did try my bacon and eggs, did you?"

Tenderly told, this well-worn tale is dazzlingly illustrated in Hughes' wonderful signature style. Drawing upon the work of Jazz Age French couturiers Paton, Doucet, and Poiret, Hughes' flapper-style designs are softly dazzling, and her dance scenes, she says, are chicly inspired by the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella (Kate Greenaway Medal (Awards)) is a fresh tale of a Cinderella who chooses her own happy ending.

Tales from Never Land : Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg and Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand by Gail Carson Levine

Providing the backstory for Barrie's Peter Pan, in Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, Newbery Award winner Gail Carson Levine tells an intriguing tale of how Never Land's fairies are born and how the magical island provides eternal youth to its residents, including Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

Born of a baby's first laugh, Never fairy Prilla suddenly appears at Fairy Haven, complete except for her apparent lack of a special talent. Unlike Tinker Bell, who repairs pots and pans, or Rani, who can work magic with water, Prilla's lack of a useful ability leaves her feeling lonely and unwanted among the hard-working fairy society of Never Land. But Mother Dove, whose molted feathers provide the magical flying dust for the fairies and whose egg protects the perpetual youth to all Never Land residents, loves little Prilla and assures her she has an important but unrecognized talent.

When a wild hurricane injures Mother Dove and breaks her egg, Prilla is one of the three chosen to compel the dragon Kyto to provide the flame to restore the egg. Together with Rani and Vidia, the swiftest flying fairy, Prilla helps secure a mermaid's comb, Captain Hook's cigar holder, and a golden hawk's feather with which to bribe the dragon. When the dragon's treachery threatens the repair of the egg, it is Prilla's ability to summon the power of belief of the mainland children, the Clumsies, which saves the magic of Never Land.

Although Fairy Haven is saved by the successful restoration of the egg, in the just published sequel, Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand, things start to fall apart when Soop, the vengeful mermaid who gave up her comb to save the egg, demands payment in the form of a fairy wand from the Great Wanding Fairies.

When Fairy Queen Ree travels with Tink and Terence to secure a wand, Tinker Bell unfortunately picks a selfish and mischievous wand which infects all who touch it with wand madness and grants wishes which wreak havoc on Fairy Haven. Rani is entrapped in the body of a bat, Tinker Bell forgets Peter and falls in love with dust fairy Terence, the magical golden hawk shrinks, and mermaid Soop sends a flood which threatens to drown the fairies of Fairy Haven. Worst of all, the evil wand forces Mother Dove's magical egg to begin to hatch, an unthinkable event which will end the enchantment which protects Never Land.

Armed with calming thoughts and special fairy dust, Tink manages to calm the wand so that its heart grows big enough to melt its spite. At last all selfish wishes are reversed, and Prilla wisely returns "the finest, biggest-hearted wand the Great Wandies would ever own."

Gail Carson Levine tells a light, fast-moving story which nonetheless shows the destructive power of greed. As in the first book, David Christiana's lavish full-page and pull-out illustrations ably support Levine's characterizations.