The Secret Fairy Club by Emma Roberts, Raahat Kadjuli & Mira Miroslavova

One on my earliest childhood memories is my grandmother sharing Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies with me, as I lay in her big double bed face swollen with the mumps and beyond miserable. Living in Bluff where the next stop is Antarctica, as the waves crashed across the road but the room was warm as because there was a fire in the hearth (it was a long time ago) she read the poems from the book that she had given my mum when she was a child and which I still treasure.

So it is no surprise that despite (or because of) being the only girl growing up amongst eight boys (seven of them were cousins) I grew up in a world of fantasy and fairyland; that my favourite authors were Enid Blyton, Peg Maltby, Shirley Barber, and, of course, Barker herself; and that as soon as I knew I was having a granddaughter, the nursery and later, bedroom, were always going to be a wonderland, shelves full of classic and modern fairy books! Not to mention my obsession with buying Flower Fairy fabric!

My granddaughters were always going to dwell in Fairyland...

And so I was the perfect person to answer the first question in this magical book - A very special society is looking for new recruits to join their number. I don't suppose you'd be interested, would you? They don't say anything about an age limit - just adopt a fairy name (Barbara Freesia) and then read the information about fairies in the book, and collect the badges as I go, then after reciting the ancient oath, find the secret surprise at the end! What could be better for someone who is still that little girl with mumps - or any little one you know who believes?

This is a companion to The Secret Unicorn Club, and is just as enchanting. Its presentation follows a similar format as readers learn about where fairies are found, where they live, what they wear, how they help to protect their world, and culminating in the Fairy Queen's Ball. Information is in manageable chunks and there are plenty of illustrations to pore over. It even has its own secret book hidden away, a story within a story.

Usually my review copies go to local schools but this one will be on that shelf of special books, right beside that one my grandma read to me and The Sun's Babies, a 1910 publication that she, herself, grew up with. Perhaps my granddaughters will value them as much as I do.

Themes: Fairies, Clubs.

Barbara Braxton