Product Description

Beth Parish is an eight-year-old girl blessed with a marigold flower fairy spirit. With her mentor, a monarch butterfly fairy, Marigold learns how to be a fairy, and discovers things like the Fairy Handbook, the vast variety of fairy wands, how to create fairy lights, the purpose of fairies, what gnomes do, and the three things gremlins are afraid of. She attends fairy circle and meets her new friends —Thistle, Dragonfly, and Firefly. They discover that the brownies, keepers of the Feather of Hope, which is the source of all hope on Earth, need their help. Marigold must enlist the aid of her dachshund, Peanut, in a daring mission to rescue the Feather of Hope from a house occupied by dangerous gremlins.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #753500 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 52 pages

From Booklist
Nine-year-old Beth Parish dreads spending two summer weeks with odd Aunt Evelyn. Things change when Evelyn reveals she and Beth are fairies. With Evelyn's guidance, Beth, a marigold fairy, learns how to transform, fly, and use her wand. When the Feather of Hope (which keeps hope alive in the world) is taken, Beth, with her dachshund, Pete, joins other fairies in a plan to retrieve it from a gremlin-occupied house. This first title of the originally self-published Fairy Chronicles series combines traditional fairy and contemporary elements with a likeable protagonist, who comes to appreciate her new abilities and responsibilities. The rescue is suspenseful, and Sweet laces the story with light humor and abundant fantasy details (fairies communicate via nut messaging). The colorful, classically styled illustrations, new to this edition, occasionally don't match the text (characters drink root beer from bottles not mugs as shown), but they are quite appealing, as is the use of decorative lettering here and there. An accessible, enjoyable story for readers who can't seem to get enough about magical spirits. Rosenfeld, Shelle

From the Publisher
Magic surrounds us, though we can't always see it. Gnomes add color to the plants in our gardens, doves deliver our good dreams, gremlins occasionally break our things and Mother Nature keeps the balance between the light and the dark. But just because you can't see something doesn't mean it can't hurt you.

Luckily, Mother Nature has blessed some otherwise ordinary girls with an extraordinary gift: in addition to being girls, they have been granted a fairy spirit, each one as unique and beautiful as the girls themselves, each as wild and powerful as their counterparts in nature. Watch Dragonfly zoom by with the speed of her namesake, or witness Firefly use the incredible light that shines within her. Each fairy spirit is a powerful gift granting the girls who use them the ability to do amazing feats. But with power comes responsibility and the fairies might have the hardest of job of all: to protect Mother Nature and us, even though we don't even know they existed. Until now...

From the Author
The Fairy Chronicles is a series of modern fairy tales full of magical creatures, both good and evil, and heroic characters who participate in dangerous missions to protect nature and fix serious problems. Ideal for all ages, reading levels ages 7 to 12, the stories include a diverse set of fairy characters and a wide variety of other magical creatures such as trolls, brownies, witches, dwarves, gnomes, elves, unicorns, goblins, wizards, dragons, ogres, magic gargoyles, gremlins, demons, nymphs, giants, and many more.

Each story has some sort of problem to be solved such as recovering the stolen Shell of Laughter, helping to break an evil curse, solving the mystery of the Magic Snowglobe, rescuing kidnapped bat fairies, trying to locate missing human shadows, or helping a dragon complete a dangerous quest. Characters and readers learn interesting things such as why fairies fear jigsaw puzzles, what the trolls’ favorite foods are, how dragons are born, why the flamingo stands on one foot, the reason human beings have a shadow, what the grasshopper uses buttons for, where courage comes from, how hope is spread around the world, and what causes nightmares. The Fairy Chronicles are stand-alone books and can be read in any order.

Visit fairychronicles.com for more information about the series.

Customer Reviews

A Great New Children's Series
Beth (aka Marigold) is a 9 year old girls sent to stay with her eccentric Aunt for a 2 week summer vacation. It is during this vacation Beth learns she is a Fairy - a Marigold Fairy to be percise. Her aunt is also a Fairy - a Monarch Butterfly Fairy - and she will be Beth's mentor in the Fairy World.

We also get to meet some other Fairies: Jennifer the Dragonfly Fairy, Grace the Thistle Fairy and Lenox the Firefly Fairy. In this first book, the Fairies must retrieve the Feather of Hope, which has gone missing. The Feather of Hope ...
"is the means by which all hope on Earth is replenished and distributed".
The Brownies are the keepers of the Feather of Hope, but they were careless and the Feather was accidentally picked up by a human. It is up to the Fairies to retrieve the Feather of Hope from the humans and Beth and her Fairy friends come up with a plan.

All my life, I have had a love of fairy tales, but as an adult I realized there were very few new fairy tales being written today. J. H. Sweet has written a wonderful introduction into the realm of fairy tales and her Fairy Chronicles are sure to be favorite books for the children in your life.

We like this book.
from a mom and 3 daughters - 5, 7 & 11

Mom: The book encourages girls to be themselves and to rely on their inner gifts to succeed and contribute to the world. It blends a real world with an enchanting make-believe one, and it does it so well that I almost believe it could all be real. It is full of charming and funny details - like the 3 gremlin fears. It is easy reading for the 11 year old (who is doing a lot of reading aloud to the 5 year old) and it is just right for the 7 year old to challenge herself.

The Youngest: "I love fairies. I want a wand. Read it again!"

The Middle: "I like that the girls get to have the adventures, not the boys. The girls get to have wands and pixie dust and go on fun missions. They don't need swords like boys in some other books to have fun and get things done. I like the pictures. I like the cookie recipe."

The Oldest: "I wish I had an Aunt Evelyn. She's a pretty neat character. I think Marigold is growing up, and I think my sister (the youngest) is going to grow up to be like Dragonfly."

So awesome!!!!!!!!
I think that this is the best series that I've read! It's full of really interesting plots and stories and great pictures and always has a happy ending. I totally recommend this series.From Jill's daughter. :)