#62 of 1001 · October 1, 2020

It’s a wild mix of fantasy, drama, loneliness, deceit, sorrow, and revenge you’ll encounter in The Blind Fairy by Brigitte Schär and Julia Gukova. The solemn tale, originally written in German and published in Switzerland, gives us a fairy protagonist trapped in a sinister hoax: blindness prevents her from noticing that her company of loyal servants has been driven out and replaced by a band of malicious dwarves. Impersonating her faithful retinue, the wicked creatures patronizingly assure her that all is well, even as their nightly revels send her mountaintop palace into squalor and disrepair. The fairy’s extended isolation amid the dwarves’ furtively contemptuous treatment might seem to make for entirely too gloomy a narrative, but Gukova’s illustrations add fascinating elements of scale and design, somewhat leavening the atmosphere of irony and despair. Schär, for her part, ultimately gifts her heroine with the necessary insight and resolve to confront her tormentors, and proceeds to end the story on perhaps the most brazen cliffhanger you’re ever likely to find in a picture book. #fairy #dwarf #dwarves #magic #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks