Hairy, Scary, but Mostly Merry Fairies!
Curing Nature Deficiency through
Folklore, Imagination, and Creative Activities
Renee Simmons Raney
Illustrations by Carolyn Walker Crowe
NEWSOUTH BOOKS
Montgomery
Also by Renee Simmons Raney
Calico Ghosts
NewSouth Books
105 S. Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright © 2017 by by Renee Simmons Morrison Raney. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.
ISBN: 978-1-58838-328-0
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-421-7
Visit www.newsouthbooks.com
To Noseplips . . .
Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers.
— Hans Christian Andersen
When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
— Peter Pan
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
— Albert Einstein
Let the little fairy in you fly!
— Rufus Wainwright
Contents
2 - The Natural History of Fairies
Resources for Teachers and Educators
Praise for Hairy, Scary, but Mostly Merry Fairies!
You can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them—no matter how old or impressive they may be—as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much—we simply grow taller. O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
— Leo Rosten
Once Upon a Time
. . . which is really the only decent way to begin a fairy tale, there was a little girl named Renee. She was born from a prayer and a wish. Her mother is Swiss-Irish. Her father is Scotch-Cherokee. She was raised on a mystical dairy farm. She spoke to the animals, interacted with the fairy folk, and learned to respect even the tiniest portions of the natural world. Most people lose touch with the enchantment . . . but not her. As she grew up, she learned to share the magic with others.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
— William Shakespeare
1
First Sighting
The clouds above me were white shifting shapes moving slowly across the spring sky. The calico patchwork quilt underneath me was warm from the sun. I lay stretched on my back. My best friend, Nosy, the little black dog, lay beside me like a guardian. I felt safe, loved, and completely content.
In the distance I could hear the electric milking machine in Granddad’s dairy barn—chicka-chug, chicka-chug, chicka-chug—as it pulled the milk from our beautiful Holstein cows and piped it into the ice-cold milk tanks. Every now and then Granddad would sing along with the radio. His voice was a little off-key, but so full of “happy” that it made me smile.
Nearer to my nest, I could hear the buzzing of honeybees as they bumbled from blossom to blossom collecting pollen. I loved to watch the b*ees. They seemed so focused on their task that I’m sure they weren’t aware of a big world chaotically chicka-chugging around them.
My