“Fairies, Mr. Rico! Zillions of ’em!”

I am in the wrong line of business, and pursuing the wrong market in my writing endeavors (such as they are).  If I want to make it big in the writing biz, I need to hit on a big kids book series, like “Daisy Meadows” and The Night of a Million Zillion Fairies.

Well, the series isn’t called that — I think the overarching title is “Rainbow Magic” — but it’s actually a bunch of related series — Katherine is drop-dead in love with them — all about different themed fairy groups in Fairyland.  There were Rainbow Fairies (“Heather the Violet Fairy”), then we discovered there were Weather Fairies (“Goldie the Sunshine Fairy”), then she started jonesing for the Jewel Fairies (“Lucy the Diamond Fairy”) … which, it turns out, aren’t being released until July.

But wait!  There’s also the Pet Keeper Fairies (“Bella the Bunny Fairy”).  And the Party Fairies (“Cherry the Cake Fairy”).  But most of those those were published way back in the Dark Ages (2005-2006), and so are unavailable direct from Amazon.  I can buy them through third parties, but that starts adding up, shipping-cost-wise.

On the horizon?  The Petal Fairies (“Pippa the Poppy Fairy”)!  And maybe (since I haven’t seen them listed in the US) the Funday Fairies (“Freya the Friday Fairy”)!  And there are, of course, various one-offs, some of which have made it across the Pond (“Joy the Summer Vacation Fairy”), some of which haven’t (“Paige the Pantomime Fairy”).

(Minor trivia here:  In the republication from the UK to the US, “Saffron the Yellow Fairy” got renamed to “Sunny the Yellow Fairy.”  Shame; I was wild about saffron …  Meanwhile, “Izzy the Indigo Fairy” also got renamed, to “Inky the Indigo Fairy.”)

These are all Scholastic books here in the States, hence the rapid churn.  (It’s Orchard Books over in the UK.)  And, while it’s easy to make fun of the franchise, Katherine, as noted, adores them.  Heck, she uses the books as paper doll equivalents (they were playing lots of games in the living room for a while, pairing off and engaging in who-knows-what hi-jinx). 

I’m afraid that, when it comes to buying books for my daughter, I’m not only an enabler, I’m the one offering her freebies.

(It turns out “Daisy Meadows” isn’t just a pseudonym — it’s a writing company, Working Partners, who also have other series published and in the pipeline beyond “Rainbow Magic.”  The author/books are wildly popular in the UK, and the Times of London just ran (coincidentally) an article about the franchise over the weekend — which has just been sold to the media conglomerate that owns Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder.

Expect to see a kids show, I suspect, Real Soon Now.