Publication Date: December 6, 2002 | Age Level: 7 and up
Nothing in the life of Fairy Nuff is simple. After having rescued the Queen from the evil Widow Buhiss, Fairy Nuff was knighted and made extraordinarily rich from all the Widow's money. What better way to spend heaps of cash than to throw the world's biggest party to celebrate the completion of his outrageous new castle? But the Widow Buhiss is inadvertently invited and another wacky and hysterical tale begins!
Luckily, everything always comes out OK for this lovable character with the big ears and weird luck. Herbie is brilliant at ramping up the hilarity and Nuff Said explodes with laugh-out-loud humor!
Grade 3-5-This unusual tale mixes fantasy with a contemporary setting, and the juxtaposition is not completely successful. After being rewarded for saving the Queen from the evil Widow Buhiss, Fairy Nuff finds a fortune in Australian gold mine shares. He decides to use his money to build a castle and have a fabulous party. Meanwhile, readers meet a prophetic termite named Albert, whose colony in Java is cut down and shipped to Britain as boards that will ultimately become part of Fairy Nuff's castle. In addition, the Widow Buhiss has escaped from the Tower of London and is on her way to exact revenge. Add to this a Chinese circus, a contractor with dyslexia who mistakes gunpowder for cement, and a tribe of ants fleeing religious persecution in Africa. This book is packed with ideas and characters but none of them are fully developed. Also, there seems to be a gap between the sophistication of the references (the persecuted ants, for example) and the plot, which appears to be pitched at younger children. Large print and amusing black-and-white sketches on every other page contribute to the beginning-chapter-book appearance. This disconnect makes the book hard to recommend to any particular audience. Shara Alpern, The Free Library of Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Herbie Brennan lives in County Carlow, Ireland. He is the author of many very successful books for adults and children including Fairy Nuff and Frankenstella and the Video Store Monster, both published by Bloomsbury.
Product Details
Reading level: Ages 7 and up
Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books (December 6, 2002)
A professional writer whose work has appeared in more than fifty countries, Herbie Brennan is enjoyed by children and adults alike -- sales of his books already exceed 7.5 million copies.
Herbie has an well-established career writing for the children's market -- from picture books to teenage fiction, from game books to school curriculum non-fiction. His keen eye for novelty, both in technology and market development, made him among the very first writers to create adventure gamebooks and his GrailQuest series was an international bestseller.
His teenage novel, Faerie Wars, also rocketed to international success, achieving best-seller status in more than 20 overseas editions, and was voted No 1 Top Ten Teenage Pick in the United States and listed as a New York Times Best Seller title.
Equally prolific in the adult market, Herbie has a powerful reputation for challenging conventional assumptions with penetrating intelligence and a clear, easy style. This is reflected in his interests, which range from transpersonal psychology, spirituality, reincarnation and psychical research to comparative religion and quantum physics. His reappraisal of ancient history has stirred lively debate on TV and radio as well as in the Press. He broadcasts and lectures regularly throughout the UK and Ireland.
Herbie became interested in mysticism as a child and was studying books on the subject virtually from the time he was able to read. He found himself pursuing several unorthodox lines of research, including hypnosis, and actually hypnotised his first subject -- a school friend -- at the age of nine!
He began a journalistic career at eighteen and at twenty-four became the youngest newspaper editor in his native Ireland. His early career path included magazine work, hypnotherapy, counselling, advertising and market¬ing.
His first book, Astral Doorways, an exploration of out-of-body experience, became a specialist best-seller and went on to become a classic in its field -- it is still in print some thirty-five years on.
In his mid twenties, Herbie had his first novel published, an historical romance brought out by Doubleday in New York. At the age of thirty he decided to devote most of his time to writing and has since gone on to produce more than 100 books, many of them international best-sellers.
When he can be persuaded to take a break from his writing, Herbie give lectures and seminars, which have included modules on reincarnation research, the astral plane, dreamwork, healing, spiritual development, psychical research, quantum physics and magical training..
With a background that includes writing for radio, the creation of boxed games and computer software, perhaps his greatest strength lies in the realm ideas, particularly in the diversification of publishing product into allied fields like audio and CD-ROM.
