Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Fairy Houses…Unbelieveable: A photographic Tour
Nonfiction Picture Book
For ages 6 and up
Light-Beams Publishing, 2012 ISBN: 978-0970810489
For centuries children playing outdoors have shared their games and playthings with fairies. They have built fairy spaces for their small magical friends using materials that they could find around them. Building fairy houses has, in the last few years or so, become something that creative people of all ages have started doing all over the world. Using rocks, moss, shells, sticks, berries, nuts, pinecones and other materials supplied by nature, they spend many hours carefully creating a miniature world that becomes a work of art.
In this beautiful book we are given the opportunity to see some of the fairy houses that people have built. We are taken to “Enchanting Locations” where the creative possibilities are endless, and where children and adults spend time in nature to build little homes that any fairy would be proud to call home.
We begin our journey in “Tree Habitats,” which are places where fairies and gnomes are happy to settle down. Trees not only offer shelter to the little people, but they also give builders an endless variety of building materials to work with, materials such as leaves, sticks, bark, nuts and more. One example of a woodland fairy house that we see in the book is a grand place that was built in the remains of an old tree. Little steps and ladders wend their way to upper levels of the residence, which is cunningly decorated with lichens and pinecones.
Some people have chosen to build fairy dwellings in their gardens. There are little cottages and bowers, patios and huts, all of which were carefully crafted. Some fairy architects go on to decorate the interiors of the homes as well. One person, not wanting to leave their fairy friends bereft of reading material, even created a fairy library packed with birch bark books.
Fairy homes also appear at the seaside where they are made out of stones, drifted, seaweed, shells, and even sand.
Creating one house is often such an enjoyable thing to do that some fairy house fans go on to make another and another until they have a whole fairy village. Since fairies, like their human counterparts, like to be creative and amused, some people have gone on to build other structures including art studios, a fairy-go-round, and a fairy circus.
Anyone who likes to make miniature worlds will be inspired when they see the fairy houses pictured in this book. The houses are often beautiful, always cunning, and a joy to look at.
