Book Review: Fairy Friends by Claire Freedman

Book Review ...

Fairy Friends

Author: Claire Freedman
Illustrator: Gail Yerrill

Published in 2007 by Little Tiger Press London
ISBN 10: 1845064666     13: 9781845064662

"Find a poem for YOUR best friend in this beautiful book about the friendships that fairies share."


This is a storybook about the importance of friendships whether you are a wee faerie or not. Drawn within patchwork borders, each page looks magical and enchanting as Ms. Yerrill has done an excellent job of sketching the cute expressive faces on the faeries as they each seem to be smiling right back at you. Told within the setting of pretty flower garden, Ms. Freedman tells a tale through a series of poems about the love that can be found when sharing with others. Throughout the book the faeries show you how to enjoy the fun days of summer including garden parties, finding fairy dust at the end of a rainbow and the hiding of tiny treasures.  



You can find this book at your library or you can purchase it through your local bookstore or online through both Amazon.ca and Amazon.uk. Ms. Freedman is a successful children's picture book author who resides in Essex, be sure to check out her acclaimed Aliens Love Underpants series too.

When picking out a new book for the Nursery's library, I guess I must be like any other faerie for as I look for the graphics, the colours and of course the uniqueness of a book and in this case who couldn't resist a cover that has purple and silver stars along with sparkly pink faerie dust floating in a bubble. I highly recommend this book to both children and adults as each verse told by Ms. Freedman brings with it a feeling of euphoria when explaining and depicting the beauty of friends and your friendships with them.

Welcome to the Faerie Luna Gardens

The Nursery has opened up yet another Instagram account titled faerielunagardens to showcase what the Faeries have growing in their gardens. So far, during the first few months of living here on Vancouver Island and living with the Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park backing onto our property line, we have been awed by finding different mushrooms, flowers, plants and trees local in this area.

With this new account we will post photos of our old and new Nursery will all of the splendour that nature has to offer.

A bit about the Nursery:

Created/founded in Fort Smith, NT, located just above the 60th parallel in Canada's north. The weather there can swing from -30C in the winter to +30C in the summer.
Fort Smith has a Dry Continental Subarctic climate with very long harsh winters combined with warm but relatively short summers. With this diverse temperature the environment of this area can be both stark and barren in the cold but lush and green in the heat. Most gardens and flowerbeds are raised as the permafrost stills lingers just meters beneath the surface of the ground but this doesn't stop the Faeries from gardening.

Now the Nursery has relocated Qualicum Beach, BC where the climate is classified as a Warm-Summer Mediterranean climate. Meaning that it has cool, wet winters and relatively dry summers allowing it to be considered to have the mildest climate in Canada. The average temperature during the rainy winter hovers around +1-3C and during the heat of summer it reaches to a balmy +25C.  The area is known for its amazing gardens so I can't wait for spring/summer to get here. With this just being the first week of March (2017), the Faeries have been busy preparing for spring planting as the local markets have already held their 'seed sales' and bedding plants can be found outside of shops ready for sale.

Let us celebrate the wonders of the outdoors ... welcome to the faerielunagardens.......

On frilly note paper..

This is the message that the nursery received from one of the Mistress Sanna's that found a forever home away from the cold cold ocean. We always love to have updated and shared notes and even photos too...

"Hello My sweet caretaker,

Thank you so much for helping me come into this world of 2014. I find these fancy letter writers very interesting!! Michelle types for me, But I picked out everything, I wanted your letter to be extra special.

Michelle says you would like to see my room, and know if I am happy. Yes, my sweet friend, I am very happy here. They let me stay up as late as I want. I have my own t.v. And I have made new animal friends that play with me and sleep with me, and we even go on adventures together!!

I have a tray to help keep my furniture in place. A wonderful magic pool that my fish friend takes me on rides in. Sometimes we dive deep in the pool! You should see duckies face! When we dive deep, sometimes we come up in other places too. Saturday, we ended up in France! They place special rocks and shells around my pool, so I can sit by the waters edge, and brush my hair out. I even have a seashell seat! They also gave me special bottle of grooming lotion. It helps me clean myself, and softens my fair. They called it 'essence of water dragon' And boy is it a big bottle!!! I think it may last me a lifetime! In my pictures, you can see my bed, it is a paua shell, lined with hand embroidered sheets and pillow, and beside me, a little table made from a flower, with a bell on it, that I rend if I need anything! And of course my TV! I never saw anything like it, but it is fun watching people do silly things on it. Thank you again for my new family. They pamper me, and make me feel special. As time goes on, we may go places together, and send you pictures if you like. That way you can see how things are going. Would you like that? I miss you my friend, and all the sweet babies in the nursery too. Before I left, they gave me a small sac of fairy dust so I could have something of them with me no matter where I go. Tell them that I sprinkled my whole room with it, so that every where I look I remember them, could you please? Oh goodness, I am going to get , what did Michelle call it? Homesick again if I am not careful!  :) No matter how much I love them, I love you just as much. Be good to yourself! E-hugs!!!!
-- Mistress Sanna"

An Eleventh Hour Visitor?

Now here we are at a very northern nursery in Canada, with the sun now setting earlier and earlier in evening with barely a the light from dusk sky.

At this hour the Faeries rarely are allowed outside at this unusual hour. Why you ask? Well to be honest the mosquitoes are still bigger than they are! To me, if I was a Faerie...I wouldn't want to be outside either.

So there I was sitting outside breathing in the fresh air, hearing the breeze murmur their way through the tips of tallest tree branches and watch the light as it quickly fades away. I was enjoying my cup of tea in my favourite mug when I thought I heard a rustle in the low lying undergrowth and small shrubs?

Being as inquisitive as I am (and well knowing that I would be in BIG trouble from the Faeries if I didn't go and investigate) I ran back into the nursery to grab the camera....thankfully I didn't rouse anyone or else I never would have gotten back outside!

And this is what I found...I'm not too sure who this is? What they are doing here at the nursery? Where they came from? Are there more? Why are they rustling around just outside the nursery in the late evening light? Why are they here? The questions going through my head were quickly being asked to the point I just couldn't keep up and I defiantly can't remember to write them all down here.

This is what I heard...whispers, sighs, and even though I was within hearing distance I still couldn't distinguish the language that I could just barely hear.

What could I see....a hat that definitely had undoubtably had a curly form, it looked a lot like burlap to me but then how could burlap have form? A very long beard could be seen from a side profile, leading me to believe that our visitor just might be a little old man, gnome, dwarf!

This wee creature was definitely looking around but didn't seem to wander to far from where I originally found him. He just kind of was gazing, inspecting and possibly even peeking through the leaves just checking me out as well?

Now a lot of the pictures that I am posting may very similar in looks but all I could think of what to do was to keep pressing the shutter button just to make sure that I got something on film.

Once inside the nursery, I uploaded the photos from the camera to my iPhoto....now it is VERY important that you realize that none of these photos have been altered in anyway. All I did was add our watermark...well for you know why reasons.

I will definitely take another gander in the morning and perhaps let the Faeries out to look around just in case he is just too nervous to see me, me who must look like a giant.

So here he is our eleventh hour visitor...

A Blog Posting Featurette

Wow! This posting is being done about another blog that is featuring the faerie nursery.

Melanie from Violet's Buds has chosen us as their feature shop this week. She did a great write up of me and the company and included tons of pictures.

Please drop by her Facebook page and show her some love. You can also join her Twitter feed too!

Oh...and not to forget, you can enter on her blog site hosted by Rafflecopter to win a Seed Pod Baby that I will ship free of charge anywhere.

Thank you so much Melanie for featuring us.

Visitors :)

I had visitors to the nursery this week and what fun was that (and they even wore the slippers I had bought for visitors...that was almost just as exciting).

So while here, they got to make their own petal faeries.

Long story....are you sitting comfortably....got a nice soft chair??

So we will start out with Thum. Thum started pulling down bags of flowers....she seemed to be quite partial to the peach and the turquoise ones...I thought....ooooohhhh I like where she is going with this. Then the next time I took a peek over to the other side of the table...all of a sudden the dark dark red flower bag was spread out across the table! Like what happened to the soft gentle faerie?? Next, she pulled down the black bag of petals!! Now wait a minute....how can one go from delicate to goth within minutes?? I was politely corrected...not dark or goth...Christmasy (okay, thinking that isn't even a word..but you all know what I meant so that's all that matters). Next came out the feathers, no not the wee little ones I use to make faerie wings but the great big like pterodactyl ones (okay, so I'm exaggerating...just trying to get my point across). Next came the hair-do. So lets just get the picture (before you get to actually see one). Petals were red, black, shimmer and I think she added in a couple of white ones. Large feathers, 4 to be exact, 2 big fluffy ones and 2 peacock kind of like. What would you think she thought of for hair?? Any guesses?? She ended up with BLUE. Did you happen to read that correctly? Did you read BLUE. Sparkly BLUE!! Go figure!!

Next we have Alyssa. Shy little Alyssa, I thought for sure I had this one nailed! While Thum had the turquoise flowers out, I seen Alyssa start to pull one or two out for her own faerie. Then she was reaching for the oranges and peaches. Nice, nice combination. Subdued...quiet like her. Then...no hold on....and I'm not repeating Thum's story here for you to read. All of a sudden Alyssa found a bag of the all the really weird flower petals...like the zebra striped ones and stuff. Ones that I had got in sets of flowers that I really really liked and didn't have a choice but to buy as well since they all came together. Well to say her eyes went bigger and bigger like saucers was an UNDERSTATEMENT.....all I heard was ooooohhhhh and ahhhhhhh! There we go again.....off on another completely different road than I thought she would take. So I just took in a deep breath and reminded myself...this is her faerie (did I secretly say to myself....boy, I sure am glad that this faerie will be going home with her... as can you imagine the ruckus she would cause in the nursery???). Next time I glanced over...Alyssa had not one set of petals on the go, but two sets. She decided one faerie for each of her moods. The quiet side and the not so quiet side of Alyssa.

And now to the pictures, faerie names and the stories they though of for each one :)

Thum's little faerie Miriam

Miriam is a feisty little late autumn faerie. One day when out on one of her adventures 

she had an encounter with a nasty garden gnome who nipped her wing off for his 

prized feather collection. Now you will be lucky to even catch a glimpse

of Miriam as she easily shies away when someone nears the garden. 

Alyssa's more wild side Roxy

Roxy is the life of the party at the nursery. With her loud stripes and bright colours, 

she likes to brighten every one's day. Her past time is sneaking out with her 

quiet sister Misha to paint the lilies with her wild stripes.

And of course, Alyssa's more quiet side Misha

Misha is the quiet and shy sister to Roxy. She loves to serenade the other faeries 

of the nursery with her violin but sometimes goes off to play a faint tune somewhere in the garden. 

She always seems to go along with Roxy's adventures but secretly she loves the excitement.