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.
Interesting BBC article about the
fairies:
Website devoted to the Cottingley
faires:
Article about Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle 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.
