Giving Up My Self-involvement

Perhaps you've noticed that I actually enjoy reading children's and YA books. I know it is often difficult to believe because I'm so fussy, but, really, I like them. Unfortunately, I like them in my own cranky, probably adult, way. So, as I may have mentioned before, I have to struggle to control the adult Gail and try to look at some of the books I read as if I were a child. Or at least I have to try to remember what I was like as a child.



A case in point is The Charm Bracelet, the first in the Fairy Realm series by Emily Rodda. Quite frankly, except for the cat fight toward the end, I really didn't enjoy this book. In fact, I had so little interest in it that I wasn't planning to blog about it.

I think I don't like fairies.

But, then, just as I was finishing reading it this morning, I remembered that when I was in second grade I was seriously in love with Peter Pan. Not Tinkerbell, the fairy in that story. She was a girly pain-in-the-neck. (And perhaps the reason I don't care for fairies now.) No, I was totally taken with Peter. I believed he lived in the woods behind our house.

Maybe The Charm Bracelet would have been right up second-grade Gail's alley. The book is all about a young girl who finds a gate into a fairy realm at the back of her grandmother's yard and learns that she's descended from a fairy princess.

Being descended from a fairy princess would make me a fairy princess, too, as far as I'm concerned, while loving Peter Pan would just make me a truant boy's girlfriend. Does anyone else think this is a no-brainer?

So while the adult Gail wasn't grabbed by this story, I can keep an open mind on this one. A young girl, particularly one who is already into fairies and princesses, may find this series to be just the thing for rainy days like the ones we've been having here in New England lately.