The Night Fairy

The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz and illustrated by Angela Barrett is a 2011 Notable Children’s Book.

Exposition:  Flory is a night fairy who was born a little before midnight.  She has beautiful wings with sensing feathers at the end.  Flory was less than three months old and it was springtime. 

Conflict:  Flory’s winds are crunched up and severely damaged during a run in with a small bat.

Rising Action:  Flory falls into a Giantess’s garden, frightened and in pain, she wraps herself in cherry blossoms.  She feels for her wings and realizes that they are not there anymore.  Flory decides to become a day fairy.  Flory has many struggles in the garden, but she makes herself a home in an abandon birdhouse, stockpiles food and befriends a squirrel that carries her around on his back.   

Climax:  Flory is attempting to rescue a mother hummingbird from a large spider’s web.  She has cut the hummingbird free of the web, but she is still wrapped up in the spider’s silk.  When a raccoon takes the hummingbird in his mouth, Flory challenges the raccoon that drops the hummingbird when he laughs.  A bat comes from nowhere and starts attacking the raccoon, who finely runs away.  Flory is now terrified   since she had lost her wings to a bat.

Falling Action:  Flory discovers that this is the same bat the accidently bite off her wings.  The bat keeps watch with Flory over the hummingbird until morning when the sun warms the mother hummingbird sufficiently enough for her to fly back to the nest.

Resolution:  The mother hummingbird gives Flory a ride on her back up to Flory’s home.  Flory realizes that there is nothing that she needs to ever be afraid of again.

The illustrations in this story are superb; they complement the story and give it a deeper perspective.  They show just how small Flory is and what a brave, compassionate and clever fairy, she has become.  The vocabulary used is this story is rich yet simple enough to be enjoyed by a student reading their first chapter book.

Schlitz, L. (2010). The Night Fairy. Shenzhen, Guangdong, China: Candlewick Press.