Child of Faerie, Child of Earth
Grade 1-3?On Hallow's Eve, "when widows grieve," a faerie boy and a mortal girl meet and briefly share one another's worlds. The human girl spends an enchanted night dancing and dining in elven halls, but refuses the faerie's offer to make her his queen. In turn, the boy with wings enjoys a day of barnyard activities and a midday meal with the child of earth but he chooses to return to his eldritch realm. However, they exchange tokens of their friendship before parting?a nourishing egg from her to him and an ethereal feather from him to her. They visit with one another "now and then" into old age. This gentle story of an unusual friendship is recounted in challenging vocabulary and melodic rhyme; careful phrasing favors neither earth nor faerie but paints evocative images of both. Dyer's watercolors completely fill the pages opposite the poetry and offer bucolic settings of sunlit golds and nocturnal blues for the sturdy, round-faced children. Share this one-on-one to encourage appreciation of the delicate details, such as the snippets of illustrations pulled from the full-page spreads to accompany the text. This simple tale is appropriate for a younger audience than this talented team's The Girl in the Golden Bower (Little, Brown, 1994), and will appeal to listeners willing to sacrifice drama for atmosphere.?Carol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.