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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
It’s Queen Titania’s birthday party, but Sara the Party Games Fairy’s magical party hat is missing. Without it, party games everywhere will go wrong! Rachel, Khadijah and Gracie have discovered that Jack Frost’s sister, Jilly Chilly, has stolen the missing hat. Can they reunite it with Sara before it’s too late?
It’s Queen Titania’s birthday and she needs to perform a special ceremony during her birthday party in order to renew her right to rule for another 20 years. However naughty Jack Frost has other ideas. He’s stolen the charms that belong to the Birthday Party Fairies, knowing that if the party doesn’t go ahead then he and his sister Jilly Chilly can take over as King and Queen of Fairyland.
When Rachel learns that the party games are going wrong at her 5-year-old neighbour Nathan’s birthday party, she knows that this is linked to the Birthday Party Fairies and their missing charms. Rachel’s best friend Kirsty is away on holiday but new friends Gracie and Khadijah are happy to help and they soon discover that the problem is that Jilly Chilly has Sara the Party Games Fairy’s magical party hat. Even worse, Jilly has sent her goblins to visit three birthday parties going on in the human world in order to steal the party game prizes and one of those birthdays is Nathan’s!
Can the three girls help Sara get her party hat back before Nathan’s birthday is ruined and Jilly Chilly progresses her plan to take over as Queen of Fairyland?
The 2nd book in the 36th mini series - THE BIRTHDAY PARTY FAIRIES - in Daisy Meadows’s (a pseudonym for Narinder Dhabi, Sue Bentley, Linda Chapman and Sue Mongredien) RAINBOW MAGIC illustrated series for readers aged 5+ has disability representation (Sara has a prosthetic leg and Gracie was born with one hand) and fun visuals (e.g. travelling through party poppers) while the girls show a lot of initiative in trying to thwart Jilly’s plans.
The first thing I want to say about this book is how good it is to see main characters with disabilities - Sara with her prosthetic limb and Gracie who only has one hand. It’s really important that young readers have books with disability representation in it so that it widens their view of the world and the people within it so I think this is a positive thing.
My only slightly negative comment is that although the book puts the disability into the story (here Rachel makes a point of complimenting Sara’s prosthetic leg, which she’s decorating when the girls arrive), it doesn’t explore any of the differences that people with disabilities face. I don’t mean this in the way of showing disable people as not being able to have adventures but more that there are things that they need to do in order to have those adventures. For example, the story could have given Sara a moment to take a breath because her prosthetic leg was rubbing against her stump (in which case the humans could have stepped in). Similarly the fact that Gracie only has her right hand may mean that she was unable to grab the magical party hat back when she needed to use her left so she needs to co-ordinate with Khadijah and Rachel so they work together to snatch it.
None of this is to diminish disabled people but to acclimatise young readers to the way that disabled people may sometimes need to do things in different ways or face issues that other people don’t ordinarily thing about. Also part of the reason why this stood out for me was because in RAINBOW MAGIC - HOPE THE WELCOME FAIRY, I thought that the authors did a good job of highlighting Gracie’s concern about how to answer any questions that her new classmates may have about her missing hand. That kind of thoughtfulness wasn’t there in this book and is a shame.
The story itself has some great visuals. I liked the way that the authors incorporate party imagery into the magical elements, e.g. in one scene the girls are transported to a party through a party popper and I also enjoyed how the authors incorporate party games into how the girls try to recover Sara’s magic party hat.
The story itself follows the RAINBOW MAGIC formula - Fairyland is once again in peril and the girls have three attempts to get the party hat back as they follow Jilly Chilly’s goblins to the different parties and discover them trying to scupper the games. I’m not knocking the formula because it works well and I like the way the girls all co-operate and work with each other and are supportive of one and other.
Jilly Chilly is a bit of a ridiculous character with her stomping around and shouting. I did kinda want her to be a bit more of a threat or at least to see a bit more of her relationship with her brother Jack. The goblins here are also fairly uniform and bland, although I did enjoy them going around Fairyland discussing which fairy’s house they were going to take when Jilly becomes queen (not least because there are some nice shout backs to previous RAINBOW MAGIC books). The illustrations here are fine and the unnamed illustrator does put some energy into the goblins’ antics in particular.
All in all I can see why the RAINBOW MAGIC series is such a long lived success and I’d have no hesitating in checking out other books in this mini series or in the wider series.
The Verdict:
The 2nd book in the 36th mini series - THE BIRTHDAY PARTY FAIRIES - in Daisy Meadows’s (a pseudonym for Narinder Dhabi, Sue Bentley, Linda Chapman and Sue Mongredien) RAINBOW MAGIC illustrated series for readers aged 5+ has disability representation (Sara has a prosthetic leg and Gracie was born with one hand) and fun visuals (e.g. travelling through party poppers) while the girls show a lot of initiative in trying to thwart Jilly’s plans.
RAINBOW MAGIC - SARA THE PARTY GAMES FAIRY was released in the United Kingdom on 11th May 2023. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
It’s Queen Titania’s birthday party, but Sara the Party Games Fairy’s magical party hat is missing. Without it, party games everywhere will go wrong! Rachel, Khadijah and Gracie have discovered that Jack Frost’s sister, Jilly Chilly, has stolen the missing hat. Can they reunite it with Sara before it’s too late?
It’s Queen Titania’s birthday and she needs to perform a special ceremony during her birthday party in order to renew her right to rule for another 20 years. However naughty Jack Frost has other ideas. He’s stolen the charms that belong to the Birthday Party Fairies, knowing that if the party doesn’t go ahead then he and his sister Jilly Chilly can take over as King and Queen of Fairyland.
When Rachel learns that the party games are going wrong at her 5-year-old neighbour Nathan’s birthday party, she knows that this is linked to the Birthday Party Fairies and their missing charms. Rachel’s best friend Kirsty is away on holiday but new friends Gracie and Khadijah are happy to help and they soon discover that the problem is that Jilly Chilly has Sara the Party Games Fairy’s magical party hat. Even worse, Jilly has sent her goblins to visit three birthday parties going on in the human world in order to steal the party game prizes and one of those birthdays is Nathan’s!
Can the three girls help Sara get her party hat back before Nathan’s birthday is ruined and Jilly Chilly progresses her plan to take over as Queen of Fairyland?
The 2nd book in the 36th mini series - THE BIRTHDAY PARTY FAIRIES - in Daisy Meadows’s (a pseudonym for Narinder Dhabi, Sue Bentley, Linda Chapman and Sue Mongredien) RAINBOW MAGIC illustrated series for readers aged 5+ has disability representation (Sara has a prosthetic leg and Gracie was born with one hand) and fun visuals (e.g. travelling through party poppers) while the girls show a lot of initiative in trying to thwart Jilly’s plans.
The first thing I want to say about this book is how good it is to see main characters with disabilities - Sara with her prosthetic limb and Gracie who only has one hand. It’s really important that young readers have books with disability representation in it so that it widens their view of the world and the people within it so I think this is a positive thing.
My only slightly negative comment is that although the book puts the disability into the story (here Rachel makes a point of complimenting Sara’s prosthetic leg, which she’s decorating when the girls arrive), it doesn’t explore any of the differences that people with disabilities face. I don’t mean this in the way of showing disable people as not being able to have adventures but more that there are things that they need to do in order to have those adventures. For example, the story could have given Sara a moment to take a breath because her prosthetic leg was rubbing against her stump (in which case the humans could have stepped in). Similarly the fact that Gracie only has her right hand may mean that she was unable to grab the magical party hat back when she needed to use her left so she needs to co-ordinate with Khadijah and Rachel so they work together to snatch it.
None of this is to diminish disabled people but to acclimatise young readers to the way that disabled people may sometimes need to do things in different ways or face issues that other people don’t ordinarily thing about. Also part of the reason why this stood out for me was because in RAINBOW MAGIC - HOPE THE WELCOME FAIRY, I thought that the authors did a good job of highlighting Gracie’s concern about how to answer any questions that her new classmates may have about her missing hand. That kind of thoughtfulness wasn’t there in this book and is a shame.
The story itself has some great visuals. I liked the way that the authors incorporate party imagery into the magical elements, e.g. in one scene the girls are transported to a party through a party popper and I also enjoyed how the authors incorporate party games into how the girls try to recover Sara’s magic party hat.
The story itself follows the RAINBOW MAGIC formula - Fairyland is once again in peril and the girls have three attempts to get the party hat back as they follow Jilly Chilly’s goblins to the different parties and discover them trying to scupper the games. I’m not knocking the formula because it works well and I like the way the girls all co-operate and work with each other and are supportive of one and other.
Jilly Chilly is a bit of a ridiculous character with her stomping around and shouting. I did kinda want her to be a bit more of a threat or at least to see a bit more of her relationship with her brother Jack. The goblins here are also fairly uniform and bland, although I did enjoy them going around Fairyland discussing which fairy’s house they were going to take when Jilly becomes queen (not least because there are some nice shout backs to previous RAINBOW MAGIC books). The illustrations here are fine and the unnamed illustrator does put some energy into the goblins’ antics in particular.
All in all I can see why the RAINBOW MAGIC series is such a long lived success and I’d have no hesitating in checking out other books in this mini series or in the wider series.
The Verdict:
The 2nd book in the 36th mini series - THE BIRTHDAY PARTY FAIRIES - in Daisy Meadows’s (a pseudonym for Narinder Dhabi, Sue Bentley, Linda Chapman and Sue Mongredien) RAINBOW MAGIC illustrated series for readers aged 5+ has disability representation (Sara has a prosthetic leg and Gracie was born with one hand) and fun visuals (e.g. travelling through party poppers) while the girls show a lot of initiative in trying to thwart Jilly’s plans.
RAINBOW MAGIC - SARA THE PARTY GAMES FAIRY was released in the United Kingdom on 11th May 2023. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
