Review: The Fairy Ring by Mary Losure

Title: The Fairy Ring
Author: Mary Losure
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pub Date: March 27, 2012
Category: NONFICTION – young adult, children

This is the full story of the Cottingley fairies, the photos of fairies that came to light in England in the early twenties. You have probably seen these photos at one time or another, but when they first appeared, experts in photography at the time indicated that the plates the photos were real. The photographic plates had not been tampered with. Several influential people of the time, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes) were sure that fairies were real and latched onto these photos as proof.

The interesting thing about this story is why the girls who took the photos grew to be old ladies before the truth of the photos came out. Perhaps people’s beliefs that there are fairies made them more inclined to believe that these young girls were innocent of any scam. They were innocent in that they never intended the photos to become public and particularly not in the vast way that happened.

The story is told by Mary Losure very simply making it suitable reading for young readers, however I think that a child would need to be interested in the story behind the photos to stick with it. I did and I think that Losure probably told the story in as interesting a way as possible, given that it’s the true story as revealed by letters from the time and the woman’s later autobiographies.

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