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    The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World
    Unavailable
    The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World
    Unavailable
    The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World

    Written by Mary Losure

    Narrated by Nicola Barber

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    This is a true story about Frances, age nine, who saw fairies by the waterfall behind her house.

    They were tiny men, dressed all in green. Nobody but Frances saw them, but when she told her cousin Elsie and their parents, the adults teased them in a most annoying way.

    Why not take a photograph? Elsie (who was fifteen) had the idea. She would paint paper fairies and take their picture with Frances, and none would be the wiser.

    The girls never meant to fool the world. They only took the photo so the grown-ups would stop teasing them.

    Who could have imagined that Elsie's photograph would fall into the hands of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes? Or that Sir Arthur, like Frances, believed in fairies...and longed to see one?

    In a wry feat of narrative nonfiction, reporter Mary Losure tells the remarkable tale of "two amiable adventuresses" that is almost- ?but not quite-too good to be true.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMar 27, 2012
    ISBN9781455852307
    Unavailable
    The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World
    Author

    Mary Losure

    Mary Losure, author of The Fairy Ring and Wild Boy, writes both non-fiction and fantasy for children. Before she was a children's book author, she was an award-winning reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. A long-time contributor to National Public Radio, she also reported from Mexico and South America for the independent production company Round Earth Media. She lives in Minnesota.

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    Reviews for The Fairy Ring

    3.5/5

    48 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A story based on documented facts. Frances can see nature spirits (fairies or such) but doesn't think much about it. She and her cousin get themselves in a bit of a bind when their family finds this out, so they fake photographs to stop teasing. Unfortunately, the photos come to the attention of Theosophists who, at the time, were trying to prove the existence of nature spirits. One of their members, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gets involved but is unable to prove fakery. Read on to learn what these 2 girls tell their children and grandchildren about this hullabaloo.A chapter book, written for a younger audience, but not too young. I'm not sure if the current generation of pre-teens will appreciate it though.Includes source notes, bibliography, and index.
    • 4/5
      The fascinating true story about how two girls perpetuated the Cottingsley Fairy hoax and kept it secret for over 60 years.
    • 4/5
      The Cottingley Fairies is a well known bit of weird history, in which a series of photographs taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths seem to present proof of fairies. The photographs came to international interest after the Theosophical society got a hold of the images, prompting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write an article about them in an issue of The Strand.The story here is told from Frances and Elsie's point of view in a narrative format, and begins with Frances' arrive and Cottingley, where she she begins to see little green men down by the beck (creek). Only after teasing from adults do the cousins come up with the idea of of taking the photographs, just to stop their parents from teasing them. I've been fascinated by the story of the Cottingley Fairies for a long time, especially since even after the girls confessed to their trickery in the '80s, Frances still claimed the fairies were real and that the fifth photograph was not a fake. This presentation of the story is fine for what it is, though the first few chapters are a bit rough and the style of writing has that tone of talking down ("I'm simplifying this so you young reader can understand") that appears often in young adult books, but that I rather dislike. The events are a good basic overview, and the author does quote directly from letters and original sources, but I wouldn't recommend it for adult readers. Good for mid-grade readers, maybe. I will say, though, that this has reignited my interest in the fairies and now I'm wanting to read a more detailed historical account of events and/or Doyle's book, The Coming of the Fairies.
    • 4/5
      Living in a small Yorkshire village, Frances and her cousin Elsie decide to amuse themselves by taking pictures of fairies they see by the stream in their backyard. Once the pictures go public, however, the story goes out of the girls' control, and involves famous and important scientists and men including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
    • 4/5
      In England, during and just after the first World War, cousins Elsie and Frances performed a little bit of harmless trickery with Elsie's dad's camera. Using hatpins and some cleverly crafted paper figures painted by Elsie, the girls falsified pictures of fairies that they said lived at the spring near their house. This could have been a simple family joke -- the girls did it because the father was teasing them about fairies -- except that, through a series of coincidences, the fairy photos fell into the hands of a group of theosophists. These men were inclined to believe in things like nature spirits, ghosts, and yes, fairies. One of the most notable members of the group was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Could such a brilliant man be taken in by the girls' little prank?The author of this book gives a good sense of the girls' characters as she sees them: funny, artistic Elsie, who likes a good laugh, and who resents those who would write her off as "just" the daughter of a working man; and Frances, the more serious of the two, the one who does actually believe that she's seen fairies at the spring, and who resents the intrusion of the media and the men who want to measure, categorize, and quantify the fairies. The author is also very lenient toward the girls, pointing out that they would have gotten in a lot of trouble if they had confessed that the pictures were fakes after people outside of the family got involved -- and pointing out that the girls were continually underestimated by said outsiders, because they were young, because they were girls, or because they were poor.I had heard mention of this story before, but I didn't know much about it. This brief book presents a good deal of information in a very readable fashion.
    • 4/5
      Reason for Reading: I've read Joe Cooper's "The Case of the Cottingley Fairies" and have since been fascinated with this story and with Doyle's involvement. This book for juveniles sounded like it would present the story from the girls' point of view and I was eager to read it.This is a wonderful little biography, complete with all the "fairy" photographs and others of Frances and Elsie at the time, which tells the story of how the cousins came to be together in England at Cottingly, Yorkshire. When they first saw fairies and how the pictures came to be and how ultimately their worldwide sensation came around. The story focuses mostly on the girls themselves and the story of how they came across the fairies and decided to take pictures to "prove" themselves, is incredibly interesting and takes up a good portion of the book. We get a real feel for the girls and their innocence, even though they created one of the biggest hoaxes of the early twentieth century that fooled such eminent figures as Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle. One gets a sense for a lonely Frances, moved from bustling South Africa to dreary England to wait while her father volunteers to fight in the Great War. Did she really see fairies and gnomes or was it just the daydreams of a lonely little girl? One also senses Elsie's otherwise mundane life as a young school-leaver, working in a factory, trying to protect her young cousin and coming up with what at first seems an innocent ploy to stop the grown-ups pestering them. Little did they know the world they lived in was chock full of spiritualism and the existence of fairies and other little people were on the minds of many such spiritualists of the day. Once their pictures are seen outside the family, a flood of interest descends upon them which they cannot stop. The two girls, turn into women and their frolic with fairies will forever haunt them.I'd love to read Frances' autobiography in which she does continue to affirm that she did see some fairies in the beck behind her cousin's house but it is unfortunately not in print at this time. The story is very compelling to me though, that I've decided to go a step further and have purchased the Kindle edition of Doyle's 1922 study entitled "The Coming of the Fairies".
    • 4/5
      It all began with Frances, a young girl who, being new to England, one day discovered fairies at the bottom of the garden. Unfortunately it seemed Frances was the only one to see these fairies and so without proof no one believed her, that is apart from her cousin Elsie of course. But that didn't stop the teasing that followed.Elsie, being of kind heart and somewhat mischief nature, decided to put a stop to the teasing of her cousin Frances by providing proof of the existence of fairies. Something that was easier said then done, however with a strong will, an artistic flair and a borrowed camera she had managed to do just that.The Fairy Ring is a true story told of how two girls, innocently enough, fooled the world and those with the passion enough to believe. As spiritualism was becoming increasingly popular at the time, fairies and nature spirits were a popular talking point, and with so little known about the subject proof of the existence of such beings were highly sought after. But little did Frances or Elsie realise just how seriously their proof would be taken.
    • 4/5
      The book is well written and flows easily from one section to the next. It concerns a bit of history I had never heard of before, two young girls in the 1920's had many people (including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) believing that they had actually photographed fairies. What started as a way to get people to stop making fun of them became a sensation. Interesting reading and a fabulous look at a piece of British history.
    • 3/5
      Elsie and Frances spent much of their summer on the banks of the waterfall behind Elsie’s house. Frances particularly liked it there, because she could see the fairies—not that her family believed her, until Elsie found a way to get photographs of them. Elsie's photos were enough to convince their families, some researchers, even Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The photographs weren't faked… but were the fairies?

      Narrative non-fiction for maybe 5th-8th grade readers, and an intriguing story: will the girls get caught? How far will the hoax go? Mixing this into the middle school booktalks, since they're woefully short on non-fiction reading.
    • 4/5
      Living in a small Yorkshire village, Frances and her cousin Elsie decide to amuse themselves by taking pictures of fairies they see by the stream in their backyard. Once the pictures go public, however, the story goes out of the girls' control, and involves famous and important scientists and men including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.