Weather Fairies #6: Storm the Lightning Fairy: A Rainbow Magic Book

I gave these to my surrogate granddaughter. She is only 5 so she is not reading well yet. Hopefully her big sister read them to her.

This is the second series of "Rainbow Magic" fairy books written by Daisy Meadows, picking up where the seven-part Rainbow Fairies series left off. These books are innocent and engaging, focusing on two young girls, Kirsty and Rachel, who meet while on vacation with their parents, and are drawn into the magical world of the fairies, who are in conflict with the mischievous Jack Frost. The structure of this series is nearly identical to the first: the girls are given a quest in which they must help seven fairies (each with sparkles aplenty and cute, super-girly outfits and princess-y names such as Hayley, Heather, Iris, Amber and Iris... ) who have been bothered by Jack and his goblin helpers. In each book they complete one part of the quest and meet one new fairy. It is important to know going in that these books are interconnected -- each individual volume ties in with the others, so you will want to start with book #1, then go on to #2, etc. The plots are not very complicated, but they do make reference to each other, and the idea is to read them all together. The other thing to know is that these books are not very scary or troubling - there is action, but no violence and not much real danger (the goblins are easily beaten, and not very frightening) so if you are looking for longer narratives for young kids to read, but don't want anything disturbing, this series is good option. One criticism is that the books are pretty WASP-y, and while a couple of the fairies might be seen as Asian, basically the entire series takes place in an all-white, middle-class world, populated with thin, blonde girls and a few brunettes. Other than that, though, this is a good series for families looking for light, engaging, age-appropriate stories. (ReadThatAgain children's book reviews)

My daughter is 9 and has Asperger's syndrome, or high functioning autism. She collects feathers, and the weather is one of her IMPORTANT subjects. She reads fast, and finished this book quickly.... and informed me that she needs to read the rest of them so could I please help her get them right away? The story itself is a little intense because the goblin is actually trying to hit Storm and girls with lightning, but of course it all comes out okay in the end. We will definitely read the other books in the series!

We've been struggling for a way to get my daughter to read now that she's run out of Junie B. Jones books. The Weather Fairies books have done the trick. She seems to enjoy reading again for the first time in half a year or more. I have to say I haven't read any of the Weather Fairies myself but I caught my twelve-year-old son reading the series because his sister had obviously liked it. He said he wanted to read more, too.

My soon-to-be 5 year old daughter and I LOVE this series. The stories are simple enough and short enough (about 40 min) to hold her attention as a read aloud, and there are enough illustrations peppered throughout to give her something to look at as I read. Both the stories and the illustrations are delightful. These books have ignited a passion for reading in my daughter, and she is now extremely motivated to read on her own so she doesn't have to wait for me to read them to her. We can hardly wait for the rest of the series to be published in the US. There are also the Jewel Fairies, the Pet Fairies, and the Party Fun Fairies that are only available in the UK right now, but it looks like some of them will be published here this summer. You can be sure we will be pre-ordering them!