Customer Reviews

The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Now I'm an adult who ran across the book just a little while ago. I have always loved fairies, but was not really into the horrid interpretations of modern day artiest. This book is so amazing it's unreal! The artwork is so beautiful and delicate. She painted them as beautiful wide-eyed children and adolescents, with absolutely amazing accuracy on the accompanying flowers. The poems for each flower fairy describes the chararistics of the flower with such grace it sends chills up my spine. A WONDERFUL book for parents to read to their children, as well as a great book for adults who want to stay children at heart. I can not express enough the beauty and gentleness of her artwork enough! The book here contains all 8 of the Flower Fairies books as well as story of The Fairy Necklaces and the poems she illustrated for Old Rimes for All Times. You will not be disapointed.

I certainly wouldn't have rated this series of fairy books as the typical browsing material of your regular guy aged 18 - 25. Football statistics ... sure! Music weekly ... absolutely! Whimsical directories of flowers and their corresponding fairy folk ... Hmnnn, not likely.

And yet 20 years ago, in the village bookshop, Cranleigh, Surrey, England, I accidentally selected the Flower Fairies of Summer, more or less at random, from a stack on a table at the back of the cave-esque Dickensian little shop. I was instantly captivated and placed under the spell of the Folk of the pages within. The illustrations were literally spell-binding!

Over the next few years I collected them all and referred to them often for my own aspirations to illustrate. The little characters are quite beguiling in their environmental surroundings. Sadly, my collection was lost in a move and when I tried to replace them I found they were discontinued! I was aghast! Irked, that such a superb collection should be out of print and was thoroughly cheesed off with the publishing industry at large.

Then, in 1998, I was overjoyed to find a superb collection of the entire set, beautifully bound and packaged in a ribbon-tied box in a shop in Chichester. I readily shelled out the not insignificant sum of £55.00 (+/- $80.00) and it now takes pride of place on my shelves. I look through them often.

It is therefore with great enthusiasm that I encourage everyone reading this review to become acquainted with the works of Cicely Mary Barker, for themselves and their children, and of course, the children in themselves. The books are quite magical!

There are 6 fairies that never made it into the book: Cat's Ear, Convolvulus, Goose Grass, Scentless Mayweed, Sorrell, and Wild Thyme. Also, some of the images are cropped out of context, grossly enlarged, etc. Nice collection, but if you want pictures to sit and pore over, get the little reproductions of the books.

If this were the only edition of the 'flower fairies' books I had ever seen, I'd be as enthusiastic as other reviewers here. But that's just it - as publishers (Blackie and later Warner) made their various editorial decisions about cropping and omitting fairies from their different editions, they never saw fit to warn the reader about it, so a new reader has no way of knowing. I find that very unsatisfactory.

If you go to 'flowerfairyprints.com' you'll find a full list of the fairies that belonged originally to each volume, and see just how much has been lost here. It didn't start with Warne, this habit of omitting etc, but it's certainly continued by them. So: a number of fairies are missing from the summer collection and the wayside collection, and the fairies of the alphabet collection have been cropped a lot in some cases to fit in a smaller space - as marginal illustrations instead of full-page (e.g. 'King cup' picture has only one elf instead of two).

I don't understand why Warne has not chosen to bring out an edition that has ALL the fairies in the good-quality reproductions they know how to do (see their 'Deluxe' volume, which has almost all the missing fairies' pictures, only 'goose-grass getting no mention at all, but by no means all the poems). As it is, if you want ALL pictures and poems in one book, and can't afford the first edition - which is v expensive to acquire, but I assume has them all) you have to buy editions of the '60s and 70s - before the 1985 Blackie edns (the '85 Blackie edn of 'summer' has a lot of omissions..I don't know about the others) These earlier edns do have ALL pictures and poems but have cropped the pictures somewhat anyway at the edges, and don't have such good-quality reproductions (in my opinion) as these latest ones by Warne.

If it doesn't bother you to miss out on some fairies, then by all means buy this volume. But for those of us who have known them all as children, it's upsetting to see some of them exiled and forgotten! I wonder what Ms Barker herself would have felt about the industry that has been made out of her work, with so little respect for the integrity of the whole.

This book is beautifully painted, but it would be better if the drawing also includes the background. Some of the Fairies are cropped, so we could not enjoy the beautiful surrounding where it was depicted.

The drawings are delightful, as are the poems that go with each. The drawings are superb renditions and representative of both the symbolic character and physical attributes of each herb. The reading level is age 4-8, but adults may see the subtleties expressed in the poems. The short stories in the back are ones you will want to read to your children or grandchildren.

One of the most delightful gifts I have ever rec'd. ! It pulled me right out of my depression and made me dream about the "possibilities" of the wee folk! A VERY happy, light-hearted read. Would be nice for children, but adults who still believe in Peter Pan will adore this book!

When it comes to the flower fairies by Cicely Mary Barker this one of the most complete. There is so much material here that it would take several hours to really get through it.
The quality of the artwork is just phenomenal. When it comes to fairies I would refer to this book before going after any other source. In as much as this is a truely fictional work you can at times imagine that one of these fairies came and posed for her on a nice sunny spring afternoon.

Another good thing about this book is that it does not lack a diversity of subjects. There are fairies of all the seasons and additional themed sections as well. The poems do add a special feel since each one is catered to the fairy pictured.

Only thing this book doesn't have is an index that works by type of fairy, i.e royalty, infant, elves etc.

Highly recommend this book to anyone on a limited budget or just starting out their flower fairies collection. Don't get taken by the ton of knock-offs books out there. Get the original not a copy.

I came across it while shopping for my 5 year old daughter and it was in the children's section in the bookstore. It immediately caught my attention and I bought it on the spot. Well, I think it is one of the best buys I have ever done. I

This collection is simply put magical and very beautiful. If you want to recapture a little bit of your childhood, a little bit of magic and believe, buy this book, for you, for your family, as a keep sake for generations to come.

The drawings are delightful, whimsical, yet realistic depictions of the herbs. The reading level is age 4-8, but adults may see the subtleties expressed in both the poems and drawings associated with each fairy. A deep understanding and appreciation of using herbs and flowers to send messages as defined in the rules of Victorian flower language. Some of them are very subtle-- see if you can read them.