Though fairies are often most closely associated with warmer months, when the land blooms and blossoms, a new picture book imagines them in a different time of year: winter.
“Where Do Fairies Go When it Snows?” by Liza Gardner Walsh and illustrated by Hazel Mitchell, both from Maine, is a storybook that explores what might happen to fairies when winter sets in. The whimsical tale offers many suggestions from hibernation to living in fairy houses beneath the snow, all with vivid, colorful pictures to delight youngsters.
Walsh, who also is author of “Fairy Garden Handbook” and “Fairy House Handbook,” dreamed up the concept for the story.
“I was taking a walk in the winter through the snow, and I found a perfect little hollow in a tree, and I thought that would be good fairy house,” said Walsh. “I started to wonder, ‘Are there fairies in the winter?’”
Walsh, who was teaching preschool at the time, asked her students what they thought. Their responses helped her shape the idea into this project, her first picture book.
“The process of writing it was very different,” said Walsh. “With a picture book you have to think, Is there enough for the illustrator to work with?’”
And that’s where Mitchell came in. Walsh and Mitchell actually met three years ago at a children’s book event in Camden, where Mitchell was giving out postcards with fairy artwork on them. Walsh, who’s written a number of fairy-related activity books, liked the style and wanted her to work on this book.
“It was just a perfect marriage of my portfolio and her manuscripts,” said Mitchell. “I got the manuscript before I signed the contract, and I loved the words.”
For her part, Walsh is excited about what the illustrations bring to the book.
“Hazel Mitchell is so talented, and she was able to bring to life the scenes,” said Walsh. “They popped. They were just so vibrant and alive. And I was just thrilled.”
And fans of Gardner’s previous fairy-related books might just see something familiar in the pages.
“I actually took some images of the fairy houses she’d built before and used them in the images,” said Mitchell. “It was a lot of world building. I thought about where do the fairies live, and what to they live in and what’s the landscape like.”
Walsh and Mitchell will be signing books on Nov. 14 at Rockport Public Library. They also will be signing books and doing a fairy-related activity on Nov. 28 at The Briar Patch on Central Street in Bangor.
“Where Do Fairies Go When it Snows?” is available at bookstores everywhere.