To wish that the creator of the Rainbow Fairies books had never been born?

[FalafelAtYourFeet]

I really, really, loathe these trash books. Every bloody story the same asinine crap...
If I never hear about Kirsty and Rachel again it will be too soon.

And the thing that frustrates me the most?

There are so many of them.
Every time we go to the Library DD chooses approximately ten to fifteen of these books, and there appears to be no sign of them running out, in fact DD informs me that there are new ones being written all the time!



I know it is just a phase and she won't still be reading these books when she is twenty but WHY WHY WHY won't she get something different for a change? (and I know the answer to that too, seven year old girls, stubborn, yadda yadda yadda).

AIBU. But I don't care. I hate them almost as much as I hate Enid Blyton. Which I drove my own mother insane with as a child .

I am glad she enjoys reading but I just wish she had never been introduced to these. Cautionary tale: Avoid Rainbow Fairies!

[Jux]

Thank you TheFirstLady (should I curtsey?).

I'll have a look on Amazon and Abe.

[TheFirstLady]

Jux - Grace Cavendish is Patricia Finney who is a fairly well-established writer of adult fiction. Her first two books, now long out of print, were huge favourites of mine as a teenager.

[FalafelAtYourFeet]

Well, she has pretty much chosen similar type books for her other ones BUT at least it is getting her looking on different shelves, an improvement IMO.

[Jux]

Grace Cavendish is a nom de plume, but I think she's a real person rather than a group. Her books are much better, though formulaic, and aimed at a higher age, but I am beginning to get a bit fed up with them, too.

What about the Flavia Gemina series (so badly televised by the BBC).

[FalafelAtYourFeet]

We are off to library again today and I told DD that for every RF book she gets, she has to get a different one.

Because she will read them if she gets them, she just seems to have got stuck in a rut. Anyway she agreed rapidly and this morning was even reading a Buttons The Lost Kitten book or some such. So maybe it is blowing over.

[Wheelybug]

At our book week dress day half the girls had come as 'myname' the 'whatever' fairy.

DD1 too loves these although was v. upset at book day that there isn't a fairy in her name. I am surprised too because it isn't unusual (probably 50ish in the top 100 names). There is one for dd2 though even though her name is much less popular.

[Poledra]

I find the RF books really tedious, but DH particuarly hates them . He does the bargaining thing with DD1 (if you get a RF book for bedtime, next one has to be Roald Dahl/Enid Blyton/something he doesn't mind reading).

Mind you, this is the man who won't let me buy Goodbye Mog because he isn't ready for it yet....

[MathsMadMummy]

Sorry for resurrecting this thread...

I told my mum, who runs her local library, about the RF series and Animal Ark etc being a team, she was shocked and slightly amused.

I was just wondering, what about the Goosebumps books? They were quite prolific... is R L Stine a real person?

[Takver]

Well - I agree that they are great for getting little girls reading. (Largely because after the first half a book, most of us would rather chew off our own arm than continue, and therefore they have to read them themselves.)

But I was also VERY grateful when dd grew out of them. Unfortunately, despite the fact that she hasn't read one at home for about a year, she has now been 'promoted' on to them at school, so theoretically I ought to be listening to her read them to me now!

However, I am a Bad Mother and refuse to listen to the school reading books - if she's going to read to me, it can damn well be something interesting to both of us.

[Tortoise]

Sorted DD's book shelf today and she said 'Can i have some more Rainbow fairy books please?'! So if anyone has any that are finished with that they want to pass on/sell please let me know. I think it is great that she enjoys reading them.

[Acinonyx]

I've been reading these to dd for about a year now - she's 4.5 and nowhere near being able to read them to herself, unfortunately. We got one by 'accident' in a magazine and dd helpfully pointed out that there were more advertised on the cover....

I am rather sick of them, myself, and now insist she has to get them from the library (although I have been known to by the odd one that I think will be espeically appealing - to her that is...). Very good controlled use of language for early readers though - I can see how they would build confidence quickly which has to be a good thing.

But good old Enid really does read like Proust in comparison. Except now they have those pseudo-Enid books e.g. the Enchanted World series. Very different - rather dull language and somewhat darker - none of the charming quirkiness of the originals.

But my pet hate for reading aloud has to be the Tiara Club...

[BadPoet]

Oh, YANBU. DD has the annual and every other double page spread is an extract from one of the books, with a handy reference to the list of titles (with ISBNs) at the back so as to maximise pester power.

[MrsSaxon]

YADNBU DD age 5 is addicted to these, and I have to read them to her!

Every library trip she comes out with armful's of them.

We have a compromise, for each Rainbow Fairy I get to read her MY choice, Moomins etc.

I have managed to steer her towards the Magic Ballerina stories, slightly more substance.

[nickelbabe]

"Where is the bookshop, and could you put the big reviews in a file for people to look at? "
i like that idea.

i try to do a big display on my spare wall when schools do stuff, but i can only have it up for a small period of time.

i'm working on putting all the past reviews and projects on the walls in th upstairs room, but really only schools and organised groups get to see that room .

and thank you for permission (and i did mean echo freer, not philip pullman! )

(the shop's in sittingbourne)

[SinginHinny]

DD1 went through a RF phase.

Unfortunately she has inherited my tendency towards anal-retentiveness and insisted on having the entire collection to then be read and displayed in order.

It cost me a fortune.

How I yearn for DD2 (aged 5) and DD3 (aged 9 months) to want to read them . I was horrified the other day to see how many more of the bloody things had been spawned.

Load of shite. YANBU at all OP!!

[pointydog]

I really wish I was the creator of the Rainbow fairy books

[barbarianoftheuniverse]

Feel free to use my comments re Echo Freer, Nickelbabe, but not the one re Phillip Pullman writing RF which was a joke.
I hope.

Where is the bookshop, and could you put the big reviews in a file for people to look at?

[UnquietDad]

"Daisy Meadows" is a pseudonym, as is "Rex Stone" of Dinosaur Cove, "Lucy Daniels" with all the animals in unusual places and whatever the writer of "Beast Quest" is supposedly called.

The series are "packages" put together by Working Partners and sold to publishers. And yes, I hated the RFs even more when I found this out.

There is an awful lot of this, these days. They are written by writers who are struggling to get their proper books taken seriously and have to get in this way because their agents recommend them for this work.

I am longing for the day when Rachel gets her nose pierced, turns to Kirsty and says "I don't really believe any of this fairy shit any more, do you babe?" And Kirsty passes the cider and says "Nah. Let's go and see Lady Gaga at the Arena."

[BertieBotts]

Are they being reprinted? I think they are quite hard to get hold of now, I sold one of my old ones a couple of years ago on amazon for over £6 - which is more than it originally cost new, I think.

Do you think I could get DS into them? Maybe I could read them to him as bedtime stories now, he is only 17 months so doesn't tend to pay much attention to what is read as long as he can do actions or point to things he recognises in the pictures

[nickelbabe]

well, i'll use your comments when the jess the border collie stories have been reprinted.

[nickelbabe]

thanks bertie: that idea is going onto my list!

I did try it once before, but they all wrote them on paper too big to put under the books!

[BertieBotts]

That is fine - but I can't imagine my comments are the most eloquent

My local bookshop has reviews of books written by local schoolchildren, I think they did it as a mini project in class on the books they were reading - if you wanted to look into this. I think it's lovely to go in and see these reviews which are obviously written by children. Makes choosing books for friends' children (who might be different ages to mine) easier too.

[nickelbabe]

Bertie, hmc barbarian, would you mind if i used your comments on series you liked as "reviews" of books on my shelves?

i promise i won't put your names on and they won't appear on the website, just on the labels on the shelves in the shop.

please?

TIA

[bruffin]

I agree with you Clary- there is far too much book snobbishness on mn. My DD 12 went through a RF stage at 7 but now doesn't read them at all.

If it is any help to you my DS didn't become a book worm until he was 13, until then other than Harry Potter he wouldn't read any other novels. He did like books he could dip into before that ie Guiness World of Records or comics.Also he listened to a lot of story cds and it was one of the Alex Rider ones that finally got him reading. I had bought him the cds from the book people and he desperately wanted to know what happened next, so read the book after that there was no stopping him.