by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 19, 2009

Jane Yolen is one of my favorite children's authors. She's written more than 150 childrens' books, using evocative freeform descriptions. But there's something special about her 1997 book "Child of Faerie, Child of Earth." Its story is pure fantasy, describing a kingdom of fairies. And making it seem even more fanciful is the fact that the story rhymes

"He was a child of faerie folk, a child of sky and air, and she was a child of humankind, of earth and toil and care." The human and the fairy meet in the dusky dark of a Halloween night, and dance the night away. It's the classic story of strangers meeting from two different worlds, but it's the drawings by Jane Dyer that help to add a quaint medieval tone. The girl is dressed in an orange coverlet, and the simple drawings have a flat almost fresco-like perspective.

And the rhymes are excellent, with the first pair of rhyming sentences followed by four shorter rhyming fragments. (Or, to put it in letters, the A, B, A, B is followed by a C-C-C-C - and then a final B). It gives the last sentence on each page a special throwaway quality - "She had flowers in her hair" - and creates anticipation for the next set of rhymes. "Oh stay with me, dear human child, become a child of night. We'll dance between the hollow hills bedecked in candlelight."

Yes, the girl's asked to join the elven court, but she sadly turns the fairy down. It's who she is - she needs human food to survive - but it turns out her world is just as magical to a fairy who's never seen it.

"And full of awe was he."

Milking a cow and feeding a chicken are all exotic to the girl's new friend - and soon the story has turned inside-out. It's the girl who's begging the fairy to join her people, living in her farm-filled kingdom, plowing the fields and living on the land. And Dyer contributes a beautiful drawing of autumn leaves seen from a hilltop. In the end, the fairy cannot join her either, but says "I'll keep the night and you the day." And the girl gives him a hen's egg as a reminder of his visit.

There's a message here, and it's poignant. The fairy urges that they should "fear no harm" whenever they visit strange new lands. And the final image of the pair shows them as an old man and woman, smiling thoughtfully as they sit together on a bench. But Yolen has one more rhyme for her youthful readers. "Be bold, be brave, be unafraid, and join that faerie ring."

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