Just So Stories

Walker Books Australia

October 2024

ISBN13:9781760657048

Australia RRP:$19.99

New Zealand RRP:$24.99

Even without the addition of the adorable little fairy house [thank you so much Walker Books!🍄] , I would have loved this delightful new take on fairies for a contemporary audience. It’s rather like a mash-up of Enid Blyton with Bottersnikes & Gumbles and I think your kiddos are just going to love Fur, Tip, Nug the junkyard fairy siblings, and their buddy Burp the toad.

These are not the kind of fairies that are sweet and pretty and fly delicately around sniffing flowers and sprinkling glittery fairydust. This lot live in a chipped china teapot in a junkyard that once was a pretty wood, until someone dumped a piano in the middle of it – and the rubbish just multiplied (as is the wont of thoughtless humans).

While the fairies live in the teapot, their friend Burp lives in a two-story bathtub apartment nearby – water above and tunnels below. The fairies survive on food scavenged from around the junkyard, gathered on their daily expeditions, and Tip, who fancies himself a great fixer and inventor, also loves to salvage bits of useful (?!) junk to re-invent cleverly.

Each chapter follows a pattern of asking the reader what they know of that particular chapter’s theme e.g. Chapter 5 Rotten Fairies – What do you know about eggs? You probably already know that birds lay eggs… It’s an excellent ploy for engaging the reader immediately into the new aspect of the story.

Fur is the oldest and she is quite resourceful although she can be bossy (well, she IS the oldest after all!) and Nug is really just a baby still. We have no way of knowing how it is that these fairies are living a parent-free existence, but I have no doubt that there will be many readers who will love this idea (definitely shades of Enid Blyton there – with parents either absent or barely mentioned).

Each chapter holds another little adventure until the lead-up to the junkyard along with the fairies’ teapot being bulldozed and them, along with Burp, having to find a new location and home. Dramatic indeed, but a nicely done segue to the second instalment, which I am definitely anticipating with pleasure.

Your readers from around 7 upwards will love this and though it has a ‘pretty’ cover as befits the concept of fairydom, even with foiled accents, it will appeal equally to all Smalls, regardless of gender.

As a read-aloud it would be superb and one of those books, that lends itself perfectly to some follow-up upcycling of junk into whatever the imagination desires. I’d also think that some writing of new episodes/adventures would be great fun. I’m delighted to give it a 5 🧚🧚🧚🧚🧚 rating and inspired to make myself a new fairy garden!