Rainbow Magic: The Complete Book of Fairies

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You'll learn about their best friends, their hobbies, their unique magical powers, and much more! What is Ruby the Red Fairy's favourite food? What is Pearl the Cloud Fairy's favourite colour? This guide is your special sneak-peek into the magic of Fairyland! The Jewel Fairies Collection Vol. Staff Scholastic , Paperback. Rainbow Magic Special Edition: Much loved by granddaughter!

Lord of the Fleas: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 2 by J. Rowling , Hardcover, Illustrated I Need a New Butt! Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Dog Man 6 Brawl of the Wild: British library lending figures published last month showed that "Daisy Meadows" was the most popular children's author for , the most recent year for which data is available. Since , titles have been published, with each series running to seven books, and numerous specials; the latest - Georgie the Royal Prince Fairy - was published yesterday.

And yet, while children adore Rainbow Magic, those two words are enough to strike fear into the hearts of many parents. Josh is "ashamed to admit to having read 20 or 30 of those cursed fairy stories" to his daughters. With pink glittery covers, and a huge cast of fairies, these are unashamedly gender-specific titles, with "real-life" themes such as the Olympics or pop culture. This plundering of pop culture is one reason parents accuse Rainbow Magic of cynicism. Many see them as poorly written books - as I learnt when my daughter read them, the verbs "gasped" and "grinned" appear with mindnumbing regularity - whose saccharine packaging and clever marketing exploit the predilections of little girls.

Giving children a world they're familiar with removes hurdles to early reading, and that's our goal," says Snowdon, who argues Rainbow Magic has democratised the children's market, bringing fiction to non-reading households, while enabling children of more literate parents to speed up as readers.

We need to have a bigger push for the life-affirming literature individual authors are producing. And even if series fiction can feel like a cynical marketing ploy intended to shift millions of books, it's hardly new. Collaborative series fiction created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate dominated the children's market in America throughout the last century, with multi-million-copy-selling series like The Hardy Boys and the fearless girl detective Nancy Drew.

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Born during the American Civil War, Edward Stratemeyer was himself a prolific writer who brought together a stable of writers to churn out children's novels based on his own storylines. Writing under the pen name Franklin W Dixon, Leslie McFarlane was one such writer milked by the syndicate, completing over titles in The Hardy Boys series, something he loathed. McFarlane despaired at the formulaic nature of the books, and as he succumbed to alcoholism he poured out his woes in his diaries: The ghastly job appalls me.

When Stratemeyer ordered him to keep his true identity secret, he was more than happy to do so. Nancy Drew and the Women who Created Her. First published in , Nancy was nothing like the subservient female characters that preceded her. Unlike the wooden Hardy Boys, Nancy was a three dimensional heroine. While Stratemeyer wrote the earliest Nancy Drew plots, Mildred A Wirt Benson penned them into novels under the name Carolyn Keene; Stratemeyer himself never knew of Nancy's success, dying a month after the first book was published, when his daughters Harriet and Edna took on responsibility for the girl detective.

Adams wrote the outlines after her father's death, and entire books from the Fifties onwards, but there was always tension between the sisters. Adams championed a less wilful version of Nancy, while simplifying plot and writing out her racism.

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Controversy seems to follow series fiction; James Frey, provocative author of A Million Little Pieces, has his own series fiction agency, Full Fathom Five, selling 12 books in three series, including The Lorien Legacies. But Frey became entangled in controversy when the New York Times ran a piece accusing him of exploiting young talent.

And yet, unlike poor Leslie McFarlane, those series fiction authors I contacted loved their jobs, since they tend to be prolific writers who use series fiction as a way of exercising their writing muscles. Brain-storming sessions are brilliant for writing, as they're both highly creative and very efficient. They've taught me to think acrobatically. Ford creates novels from a detailed synopsis of 10 well-developed chapters with cliffhanger endings. Rainbow Magic author Narinder Dhami has books under her belt.

She was a literacy teacher until , and the skills she learnt then are ingrained in her style. But if I don't think a brief will work, I suggest how to redo it.

While the concept itself isn't exactly ground-breaking, Megan Larkin, publishing director of Orchard Books, who worked on the Rainbow Magic series for two years, believes simplicity is key to its success. A decade after first publication, they still receive fan mail. We know from fan mail the fairy names really matter to the children, as does the collectable nature of the books.

As Megan says "For publisher and children, everyone's a winner. Speaking about the civilising effects of literature, he dismissed the "foolishness" of declaring any literature a "bad book", arguing we should encourage children to read any book they enjoy.

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You'll wind up with a generation convinced reading is uncool and, worse, unpleasant. Fiction you do not like is the gateway to books you may prefer.