The Fairy Garden

PreS-Gr 2–This debut collaboration features Mimi, about six, with a lovely life and just one wish: to see a fairy. She single-handedly transforms her back garden (where readers’ sharp eyes will spot hidden fairies) into a perfectly manicured space complete with tiny fairy houses—but no inhabitants. Finally, her one tear of despair brings three fairies (one brown-skinned) who explain that her leaf-raking, bug-spraying ways have made the garden uninhabitable for them (and for their pet caterpillars). Mimi allows some wildness back in, and all is well. Delicate, detailed colored-pencil drawings evoke an idyllic setting. There is some departure from realism in that, once introduced, her parents and small brother, who never plays in the garden, disappear, even when Mimi falls asleep before an open window. But in a book with fairies, realism is optional. Directions for making a flowerpot-fairy house add to the appeal.