A FAIRY WENT A-MARKETING

A new illustrator has made an exquisitely beautiful book from Fyleman's familiar poem about a fairy who buys a series of small creatures--fish, bird, mouse--and then sets them free. Henterly, a loving observer of nature, combines a selection of accurate portraits from the natural world to create a wondrously imagined place where a fairy (fine-boned, Borrower-sized, moth-winged) lives. Her house is a treasury of small things: antique thimble as vase, elegantly striped beetle as body of a stringed instrument, wasps' nest letter box, fabrics with botanically inspired designs. Outside, the poem's four brief stanzas are ingeniously linked to the seasons, so that the bird flies away against richly hued fall leaves and sunset, contrasted with the delicately lucid sky and tattered, dessicated leaves of early winter. Spring flowers, insects, shells, the bark of trees and a multitude of other details combine to make a picture book to pore over and treasure. Fyleman's gentle parable about a fairy's respect for the fellow-inhabitants of her world has been extended and enhanced by Henterly's sensitive interpretation.