Marigold and the Feather of Hope, the Journey Begins

This overwritten tale launches the Fairy Chronicles, a formerly self-published series starring girls who have fairy identities. At the center of this story is nine-year-old Beth—aka Marigold—who is not looking forward to spending two weeks with her eccentric Aunt Evelyn ("Dread settled in deeper and her dark brown eyes glazed over in boredom while she thought again about the fun things she'd rather be doing"). But things start to look up when Aunt Evelyn announces they are both fairies, and tells the girl how to morph into her fairy persona. After Beth is transformed into a marigold-like fairy (complete with wings, a dress resembling flower petals and an enchanted pussy-willow-branch wand which, when stroked, "quivered and purred"), she and her aunt, whose fairy form resembles a monarch butterfly, attend a fairy gathering. They are given the task of retrieving the precious Feather of Hope, which the brownie folk have lost, from a house inhabited by gremlins. Beth emerges as the heroine after she recruits her pet dog to scare off the gremlins, enabling the fairies (using glittering pixie dust) to repair items these creatures have broken. Illustrated with mediocre art and weighed down by extraneous detail, this heavy-handed caper never takes flight. Another young fairy claims the spotlight in Dragonfly and the Web of Dreams , due out the same month. Ages 7-up. (May)