The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World (a true story)

Author:  Mary Losure

Publisher:  Candlewick

Copyright date:  March 27, 2012

Age Range:  10 and up, Grade 5+

Lexile Reading Level:  940L

Awards:  Booklist Editors’ Choice and Best Children’s Non-fiction of 2012, Horn Book Fanfare 2012.  For a full list of awards plus a great book trailer, visit:  http://www.marylosure.com/books/about-the-fairy-ring-2/

Summary

This book is the compelling and unbelievably interesting story of cousins Frances, age 9,  and Elsie, age fifteen, and their role in the stories of the Cottingley Fairies that ran rampant around 1920 in England (as well as in the United States and other areas).  The story opens as Frances arrives in Cottingley where she and her family have just arrived from South Africa so that her father could fight in World War I.  Aside from her cousin Elsie, Frances is isolated and worried about her father.  She begins to spend her time in the beck, and when her mother questions why she goes to the beck, “Frances (for the first time in her life) yelled at her mother…”I go up to see the fairies!” (Losure, M. 2012).  Elsie was the only one who didn’t tease Frances about seeing the fairies and eventually Elsie came up with a plan to photograph the fairies. 

Elsie was an artist who had left school early and worked a series of menial jobs relating very loosely to the areas of photography and art.  Elsie comes up with a plan to photograph fairies which she has painted and taped to hatpins.  She photographs them first with Frances and the pictures come out very well.  No one knows what to make of them.  Finally, the war is over and Frances and her parents move out.  Elsie continues to work menial jobs and life returns to normal.

However, Elsie’s mother happens on a meeting in Bradford about nature spirits.  The Theosophists, as the group is called, believed in fairies.  When Elsie’s mother mentioned that her daughter had taken a photograph of fairies, things start to get interesting.  Elsie’s mother sends a print of the photograph to the Theosophists headquarters in London and received a long reply back from Edward Gardner.  Elsie decides not to tell anyone of the secret of the photographs and the Theosophists begin to excitedly pursue the reports of actual photographs of real fairies.

To make things really interesting, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, is a theosophist and takes an active interest in the case.  After he is convinced he publishes and article in The Strand Magazine in December of 1920 about the Cottingley fairies.  The Theosophists, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the girls’ parents never learned the real story behind the faked photos.  However, it was a secret that haunted Frances and Elsie all their lives.  Finally, in 1983, an article was written that explained the secret of the painted paper cutouts of the fairies.  Frances still claimed that there actually were fairies in the beck, but no one believed her.

Critique

This book focuses on several important themes while telling a completely engaging tale.  There is a condescension from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. Gardner that runs through the book.  They don’t believe that it is possible that 2 girls from working class families could have faked the photographs—they wouldn’t have the ability.  However “Elsie the school-leaver, Elsie the best-of-the-worst-or-the-worst-of-the-best, had outwitted the man from the London newspaper” (Losure, M. 121).  The book provides many examples of the class bias that runs through the story of the Cottingley fairies.

Another theme hinted at in the novel is that of mental illness.  Frances truly believes in the fairies that she sees in the beck when her father is at war. She begins to see fairies again during World War II when her husband is preparing to go to war.  “After that, she began to wonder if being worried and seeing fairies had anything to do with each other.  Sometimes, too, it seemed to Frances that she could hear people’s thoughts” (Losure, M. 146).  Losure also explains Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fascination with fairies.  Doyle’s father, who lived his life in a mental institution, had believed in fairies.  Perhaps, if Doyle could prove fairies were real, maybe his father hadn’t really been mentally ill. 

The third theme that runs through the book is that of honesty.  Losure does a good job of pointing out each time the girls could have stopped and told the truth and chose not to and how the events spiraled out of their control, affecting them their entire lives. 

The book is told from several points of view by an omniscient narrator.  It works well in allowing the reader to understand each person’s motivations and actions.  The book is also interspersed with letters, quotes, pictures and the front page of the Strand with the article which make the story come alive.

Collection

I would add this book to the collection for the following reasons:

·         Originality and Interesting Topic

·         Important Themes

·         Well-researched

·         Award-Winning

·         Engaging

Pairings

I think this topic could be paired in a variety of ways:

·         With a Sherlock Holmes book.

·         With a variety of Fairy Tales.

·         With other books about hoaxes or real-life mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster.

Links:

Interesting BBC article about the fairies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/sense_of_place/unexplained/cottingley_fairies.shtml

Website devoted to the Cottingley faires:

http://www.cottingleyconnect.org.uk/fairies.shtml

Article about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the fairies:

https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/06/12/sir-arthur-and-the-fairies/

Extension activities:

1.        Have students write an essay about a time they did or said something that spiraled out of their control and how they dealt with the situation.

2.       Have children design their own fairy cutouts and create scenes, photograph them, and make a display of their fairy photos.

3.       Have students imagine that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the girls did meet and have them recreate the conversation and then act it out.