Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Good Luck by Ellen Potter

Title: Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Luck
Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Qin Leng.

This is volume two in a series of short novels aimed at seven to nine year olds. The chapters are few and short, and there are engaging line-drawings by Qin Leng. The main character is Piper Green, a feisty and self-possessed young girl who isn't as they say, backward about coming forward. It's so nice to read a novel about a girl who isn't afraid to step up and take action even though her actions tend to be misguided and in need some subsequent correctional activity!

Piper lives on Peek-a-Boo island off the coast of Maine, and in this story Piper learns that the classroom pet rabbit had to be sent home with a teacher because a new girl is coming to join the class and she has a dander allergy. Piper isn't on board with this at all, and when she meets the new girl the next morning on the lobster boat in which they have to travel to the nearest island which sports a school, she hits up the poor girl with the story that their teacher is really a witch.

Piper's fiction is aided immensely, if indirectly, by the fact that the new girl hails from new Jersey. Their teacher's use of teaching aids relevant to New Jersey is what triggers panic in the new girl and big trouble for Piper.

Once her parents learn of Piper's behavior, they insist she go with them to the new girl's house - which turns out to be the island's lighthouse - to apologize. It's during this meeting that Piper discovers the secret value in the one earring which she had dug out from the fairy exchange hole which resides in the big old fairy tree that grows in Piper's front yard.

Once again Ellen Potter has written a highly enjoyable and quickly-moving tale that sounds realistic and tells a cool story about Piper and her antics. I loved the story and I recommend it.

Piper Green and the Fairy Tree by Ellen Potter

Title: Piper Green and the Fairy Tree
Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Qin Leng.

This is volume one in a series of short, but nicely-paced stories for seven to nine year olds. The chapters are few and short, and there are cute illustrations by Qin Leng which are simple but very effective. The main character is Piper Green, a young firecracker of a girl who is very much a go-getter and highly self-motivated.

Piper lives on a tiny island named Peek-a-Boo, which is off the coast of Maine on the North Atlantic seaboard of the US. The island is so small that there's no school and a handful of kids, pretty much all sons and daughters of lobster trappers, have to travel by lobster boat to nearby Mink island where they attend school.

Piper is fine with this, but her problem is that her favorite brother Eric has left the island to attend boarding school elsewhere, and she misses him something chronic. She has a pair of his old ear muffs and she refuses to take them off, even when she sleeps. This inevitably causes a clash with her new teacher at school.

Piper is a feisty and stubborn girl who can't avoid problems of her own making. This series looks at Piper's problems and how she addresses them, and how she then goes on to fix the mistakes she made when she first 'dealt' with the problem. This one focuses on her struggle with the new teacher who even Piper thinks looks like a fairy princess.

It also brings into play the fairy tree - a large tree in Piper's yard. One day, having run away from the boat that morning, refusing to go to school, Piper is hiding out in the branches and she hears weird noises which appear to be coming from within the tree itself. Her neighbor hears them too, and promptly gets a saw and cuts of the branch on which Piper had previously been sitting.

In place of the branch now, there's a hole and a hollow inside the tree. Piper's neighbor assures Piper that it's a fairy exchange hole, and if Piper leaves something in there, she will get something of value back. Piper likes this idea and immediate starts an exchange program!

This novel is completely charming. It's realistic, well-written, interesting, funny, and endearing. Piper comes out of the pages as a real person and she very much captures and holds the attention. I recommend this even if you're not seven to nine! Read it between seven and nine in the evening and no one will be able to say a thing about it!