Given that the Flower Fairy books are A: standalone, B: poetry and C: have no plot between them, I will be reviewing this series in whatever order and at whatever speed I am able to acquire them. Nothing like a dream of spring in the depths of winter…

Title: Flower Fairies of the Spring
Author: Cicely Mary Barker (1895-1973)
Illustrator: Cicely Mary Barker
Original Publication Date: 1923
Edition: Frederick Warne (2002), 42 pages
Genre: Poetry. Fantasy.
Ages: 3-8
First Line: The World is very old;
But year by year
It groweth new again
When buds appear.

Nursery rhymes are a tremendous learning tool for small children, conveying obvious skills such as memorization and predictive language, along with the specialized knowledge of how to read poetry in the first place – something of a lost art among today’s schoolchildren. Articles about the declining interest in poetry and what to do about it are a dime a dozen, and librarians are forever extolling the virtues of the trendiest middle-grade novels in verse, when the simplest remedy would be to avoid letting a child’s natural proficiency and enthusiasm for Mother Goose atrophy in the first place, via a fairly straightforward progression of English poets.

By providing the natural stepping-stones of Milne, Lear, Kipling and Stevenson, a gradual link would then be made to the classic narrative verse of Browning’s ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market‘ and Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ which are themselves not so far removed from romantics like Coleridge and Keats (and once a young person can read those poets, they would be able to progress both forwards and backwards in time from there with no real difficulty). Aside from the Classical Christian website, I couldn’t find a single educator advising this obvious curriculum to get kids reading poetry, probably because it would be way too white for today’s classrooms – thus they deny heritage to some children while offering mediocrity to all. In fact, educators love these new novels in verse specifically because the word count is lower and therefore they can be used to encourage “reluctant readers.” Now picture someone saying that Paradise Lost is simpler than Moll Flanders or that The Waste Land is an easier read for students than The Great Gatsby and you can imagine how topsy-turvy this whole educational trend really is.

This leads me to the Flower Fairy books of Cicely Mary Barker, which could easily fit on a young child’s poetry curriculum. Barker was an artistic invalid who took correspondence courses to become a painter while her older sister supported the family by opening a kindergarten in their house. Taking inspiration from Kate Greenaway and the Pre-Raphaelites, Barker began a series of children’s poetry books, most famously on the subject of fairies. Fairies were all the rage in the 1920s, enjoying heightened publicity thanks in part to the Cottingley Fairy photographs – and of course the Pre-Raphaelites hadn’t been immune to the lure of fairies either, which made it a natural subject for a book of botanical children’s poems. Queen Mary herself admired the results. At some point I will find a complete set of the little books, but for now this first one will have to suffice.

 

Every open page of this pocket-sized book contains a portrait of a fairy child with the flower he or she represents and on the facing page an ode to the flower in question. Her fairies were modeled by interested children from the household kindergarten, giving each character an individual appearance which combine over the book into a harmonious image of the English schoolchild of the 1920s. They are bright and happy, yet shy. They are impudent and proud and pleasant. They are beautiful, they are the generation who would grow up to endure the Second World War, and they are captured here fancifully and forever.

Each costume for the fairies was based around the flower to be illustrated, which Barker would faithfully paint from real specimens. The costumes were where true flights of fancy would occur, and Barker created physical costumes and wing miniatures to paint, drawn from the different parts of the plant with rewarding detail. As an American, the flower I was most familiar with in this book was the dauntless dandelion and so it was his costume I most closely examined, discovering botanical inspiration from cuffs to shoes to the very shades of green and gold. Every portrait has this level of care, and the result really does have the feel of Pre-Raphaelites for toddlers.

 

Barker’s artwork is only half the volume, and the accompanying poems are every bit as enjoyable, particularly for parents who are big fans of Victorian poets. I could read this book aloud dozens of times and the poems would only become more engaging due to their mellifluous and leisurely rhythm. This is a book that rewards repetition.

I’m everyone’s darling; the blackbird and
    starling
Are shouting about me from blossoming
    boughs;
For I, the Lent Lily, the Daffy-down-dilly,
Have heard through the country the call to
    arouse.
The orchards are ringing with voices
    a-singing
The praise of my petticoat, praise of my
    gown;
The children are playing, and hark! they are
    saying
That Daffy-down-dilly is come up to town!

 

This collection is best suited for nature-oriented families, those with English gardens or wildflowers of their own to hunt and observe, for the poems are not narrative, meaning Barker will always be more niche than someone like Beatrix Potter. Nevertheless, these pages cover a variety of imaginative ground, some simply descriptive of the flowers themselves while others take to their viewpoint, like that of the cheerful daffodil. ‘The Song of the Lords-and-Ladies Fairy’ ends with a fierce warning likely to stick in its young audience’s mind and keep them from getting poisoned:
And my berries are a glory in September.
(BUT BEWARE!)

Meanwhile the Willow-Catkin admonishes:

To keep a Holy Feast, they say,
They take my pretty boughs away.
I should be glad– I should not mind–
If only people weren’t unkind.

Oh, you may pick a piece, you may
(So dear and silky, soft and grey);
But if you’re rough and greedy, why
You’ll make the little fairies cry.

There’s star imagery in the Windflower Song, there’s a little Mother Goose to Sing a song of Larch trees and the shortest poem in the lot is the humble ode to the Lesser Celandine. Over it all hang the twin centerpiece of the King and Queen of Spring, who are unfortunately not placed side by side in the middle of the book as they should be by rights. The Primrose has a simple charm and grace while the Bluebell (Wild Hyacinth in this case, not Scottish Harebell) is proud and superb.

My hundred thousand bells of blue,
    The splendour of the Spring,
They carpet all the woods anew
With royalty of sapphire hue;
The Primrose is the Queen, ’tis true.
    But surely I am King!
            Ah yes,
    The peerless Woodland King!

 

Loud, loud the thrushes sing their song;
    The bluebell woods are wide;
My stems are tall and straight and strong;
From ugly streets the children throng,
They gather armfuls, great and long,
    Then home they troop in pride–
             Ah yes,
    With laughter and with pride!

Out of curiosity I made a list of the poems to see how often the rhyme schemes and templates repeated, to find that there were no exact replicas. When Barker reused a rhyme scheme she would change the number of stanzas, ensuring that every rhyme had its own face. I expect some repetitiveness would start to appear in the seven companion volumes but for now everything is very fresh, and in truth I would be very surprised if the artistic quality of subsequent installments ever dropped. Highly recommended to all English and Anglophile families.

Parental Guide, with no spoilers for once.

Violence: Completely inapplicable.

Values: English country flowers, landscape, children and folkways. Pre-Raphaelite influences.

Role Models: The children depicted are idealized, which is one of the chief purposes of art that has now been forgotten – to inspire.

Educational Properties: Memorization, recitation and elocution. Use for inspiration to plant and tend an English garden or to take a nature walk (in the right parts of the world) to hunt for the flowers – I’ve seen a number of them here in New England. Families who make their own doll costumes or other textile or artistic crafts might want a copy even if they hate poetry.

End of Guide.

I hope to acquire a complete set of the Flower Fairy books sometime soon, at which point I will make a full review series. I’m very happy to have stumbled upon this English gem I missed in my Anglophile childhood.

Up Next: Staying British with Enid Blyton.