A bedtime story to read to children

 My name is Arabella Martin and I live in a house with a lovely garden running all the way around. There are lots and lots of flowers and shrubs and trees in the garden, crowded together, in every different colour you could possibly imagine.

 There are paths that wind in and out of the garden, and my favourite path is the one that leads to the bottom of the garden. Can you guess why it is my favourite?

 The bottom of the garden is my extra special, extra fabulous, absolutely favourite place because that’s where they live. My friends – my very, very special friends…

The Fairies.

 The Fairies are called Harmony and Rhapsody, and they are best fairy friends. They live at the bottom of the garden in a hollow snuggery. Now you probably don’t know what a snuggery is – it’s a magical, secret word, so perhaps The Fairies had better tell you all about it themselves!

Hello – we’re The Fairies.

I’m Harmony, and I’m Rhapsody.

We live in the snuggery at the bottom of Arabella’s garden. The snuggery is a hollowed-out room at the top of the old gum tree, a bit like your bedroom, but a lot smaller.

The snuggery is tiny and cosy, and we’ve filled it full of fairy treasures, like soft and fluffy feathers, and perfect little pinecones, and shiny stones with spots on them, and lots and lots of bunches of dried flowers.

We sleep in our fairy beds all night long, and in the daytime, we play and
dance and sing in the bottom of the garden with our two extra special friends, Barnaby the Bizzy Buzzy Bee and Elf the Fairy Cake Maker.

One of our favourite games is when Arabella’s mummy lets her pick some beautiful flowers, and Arabella makes us a fairy ring. If we find a fairy ring in the bottom of the garden, we use a special magic rhyme to make ourselves big, just like real people.

Tigger, jigger, riminy, digger
Magic wand please make us bigger!

Then we hold hands and dance around and around the flowers. We dance and dance and dance, wave our sparkling wands, flutter our pretty wings and we sing some special songs.

Then, just before we say another magic rhyme to make ourselves small again, we sometimes leave Arabella a tiny little fairy treasure, to say thank you for making us a fairy ring.

Bittle, fittle, riminy skittle
Magic wand please make us little!

Now if you don’t have a garden where fairies live, don’t worry. One day your own special fairy will find you, because when little girls and boys are born, all around the world, a fairy is born for every girl and an elf for every boy.

And the first time you laughed, when you were just a tiny baby, your own special fairy laughed too, and now you’re a lot bigger, every time you laugh and giggle, your own special fairy laughs and giggles as well.

 So one day if you’re in the park, zooming down a slippery dip, or swinging on a swing, or even digging in the sandpit, you might feel a tiny little whoosh of wind go past your cheek.

You never know, that might have been your own special fairy, just letting you know that she’s around.