Fairy Mom and Me by Sophie Kinsella (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Fairy Mom and Me by Sophie Kinsella
Library ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-7065-5 $17.99
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-6989-5 $14.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-6990-1 $9.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 2-4
Although Ella's mother can turn herself into a fairy at a moment's notice, she's usually better at moming than magic. Her less-than-perfect spell work has left cow pies in their kitchen and incited a food fight at the grocery store, but she's a good mother to have when the local mean girl is at the door, and she's firm in her moral guidance when Ella is tempted to use magic to win a race. Goofy humor and surprising emotional depth make this early chapter book appealing, as young Ella straddles the line of unquestioning childhood admiration for her mother and is-she-going-to-embarrass-me anxiety that young readers might recognize. Mom, in fairy form or not, is endearing in both her flakiness and in her clear love for her daughter, and Ella's family life, with her no-nonsense grandmother and an eminently patient father as well as her fairy mother, generally exudes warmth. Plenty of dialogue, direct storytelling, and easy sentence structure lend the book to transitional reading, but the episodic chapters can also serve as readalouds. Final illustrations not seen. KQG
