The best children’s books about fairies

Young readers love books with bright colors and fanciful characters. They enjoy stories that are easy to understand, yet have an interesting plot. Katherine Holabird’s series, Twinkle, has it all. Twinkle is a feisty little fairy, impeccably illustrated, and lovable at first sight. In each book in the series, Twinkle solves a different troublesome issue, such as making it through her first day at fairy school, trying to remember her spells, and dealing with her new pet dragon. The vibrant illustrations add even more enjoyment to the stories. 

In addition to the Twinkle picture books, slightly older fairy-loving children will be delighted with the leveled readers that feature further adventures of the mischievous little fairy named Twinkle.

I have always believed that fairies can be girls or boys, young or old. What I love about this series is that each story is written about a different fairy animal. There’s Daisy the Deer who helps a frightened hedgehog overcome his nighttime fears; there’s Chloe the Kitten who helps a lost mouse find his way home; and there’s Poppy the Pony who overcomes her own shyness. There are 12 different books in the series. The adorable characters are beautifully illustrated and of course, have wings! These are early chapter books with sweet stories that are easy to read and have lessons to teach. They are available in a small paperback format that 5 to 8-year-olds love to collect.

Just about every child believes in the Tooth Fairy, and many picture books have been written about this elusive character. This is my favorite. The rollicking, silly rhyme, and unusual escape methods devised by the fairy to keep the kids from catching her will captivate any child who is facing the loss of a tooth. The fairy is on the run, dealing with icky situations such as drool and tangled dental floss. Is she really too fast to be caught?

I love children’s series that encourage young readers to keep track of what their favorite character is up to in the next book…and the next. Pixie Tricks is an early chapter book series that does just that. In the first book, the main character finds a portal to the fairy world right in her own backyard. In the following books, she must deal with baffling situations such as mysteriously leaking faucets and figuring out a way to rescue her cousin who is somehow trapped inside a video game. There are 5 books in this series and children ages 6 to 8 love to collect them all.

This is a surprise pick. It’s the first book about “real” fairies that I read. I was 15 years old when my local librarian showed me the book. The author was best known for creating the Sherlock Holmes series, and he wrote a book about fairies? 

The Cottingley fairies appear in a series of photographs taken by two young girls living in England in 1917. When the pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of the existence of fairies. Many people accepted the images as genuine; others believed they had been faked. This fascinating account of the “sightings” allows us to get inside the mind of a highly intelligent man who also happened to believe in fairies. But were the fairies real?