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About the Author

J.H. Sweet has always looked for the magic in the everyday. She has an imaginary dog named Jellybean Ebenezer Beast. Her hobbies include hiking, photography, knitting, and basketry. She also enjoys watching a variety of movies and sports. Her favorite superhero is her husband, with Silver Surfer coming in a close second. She loves many of the same things the fairies love, including live oak trees, mockingbirds, weathered terra-cotta, butterflies, bees, and cypress knees. In the fairy game of "If I were a jelly bean, what flavor would I be?" she would be green apple. J.H. Sweet lives with her husband in South Texas and has a degree in English from Texas State University.

Holly Sierra's illustrations are visually enchanting with particular attention to decorative, mystical, and multicultural themes. Holly received her fine arts education at SUNY Purchase in New York and lives in Myrtle Beach with her husband, Steve, and their three children, Gabrielle, Esme, and Christopher.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Chapter 1: A Dilemma

Alexandra Hastings was waiting for her friend, Vinca Simpson, to come over to play. With one more week of summer vacation still left, Alexandra hoped to eke out every bit of summer fun possible before returning to school. She sat on her living room couch and fingered a tiny, square silver box about the size of a sugar cube.

The box had a midnight-blue ribbon encircling it in both directions, as though it were wrapped like a present. Where the ribbon was tied in a bow on the top of the box, there was a small clasp. Alexandra slipped a long, fine silver chain through the clasp and placed the pendant around her neck.

The silver box had a very special meaning. Alexandra had received it as a gift earlier in the summer, when she and her friends participated in a daring adventure to help save all of mankind from torment and misery.

In addition to being like other ten-year-old girls, Alexandra and many of her friends were also fairies; and fairies were tasked with the important job of protecting nature and fixing serious problems. The last fairy adventure had involved traveling to the Island of Shadows, meeting with the King and Queen of Shadowland, helping a gryphon defeat an evil chimera and the Demon of Light, and recovering several stolen human shadows.

Human beings cannot survive without their shadows, so the success of their mission was very important. The king and queen appreciated the fairies' help very much and rewarded the girls with gifts of tiny silver boxes that were normally used to deliver shadows to newborn babies. The gift box did not contain a shadow because Alexandra already had hers, attached to her since birth. Instead, it was filled with beautiful, sparkling black sand from the shores of the Island of Shadows. Even though the mission had been a little scary, the adventure had also been exciting, and Alexandra remembered the journey to the island fondly.

Alexandra was a mimosa fairy, inhabited by the fairy spirit of a mimosa tree blossom. She had long, straight blond hair and bright blue eyes. In the standard fairy form of six inches, Mimosa had tall, wispy pink wings and wore a glistening dress made of silky mimosa flower strands in colors of light pink, white, peach, and dark pink. Her dress came to just above her knees, and she wore soft pink slippers and a belt to match. On her belt, she carried her fairy wand, a small pouch of pixie dust, and the fairy handbook.

Mimosa's wand was a small, brownish-gray emu feather that was forked and curled on both tips. The feather was enchanted to help her perform fairy magic. The glittering pixie dust in her pouch was also used for fairy magic. And the handbook contained answers to fairy questions and advice to help her make good fairy decisions. It was also an interactive book that aged with its fairy owner.

Young fairies were not allowed to use fairy magic without approval from their mentors. Madam Monarch, who was blessed with a monarch butterfly fairy spirit, was Mimosa's mentor. Mimosa had only inherited Madam Monarch as her mentor upon moving to Texas from Montana in the spring, when her mother was transferred with her job. Mrs. Hastings was raising her daughter by herself since Mimosa's father had died in a car accident when Mimosa was four.

Mimosa's mother didn't know that her daughter was a fairy, and fairy activities had to be kept secret because it would be hard for parents to understand why their daughters had to be away from home sometimes on dangerous fairy missions. Regular people could not even recognize fairies when they saw them because to non-magical people, fairies only appeared to look like their fairy spirits.

Madam Monarch didn't need to teach Mimosa very much because her previous mentor, Madam Gooseberry, had done such a good job. However, all young fairies needed to be supervised because being a fairy was a tremendous responsibility. To be blessed with power, and to gain the maturity and wisdom to know how to use the gift properly, took some guidance. So a mentor was assigned.

When Mimosa first moved to Texas, she told her new fairy friends all about the fairies in Montana. There were less flower fairies in Montana and more berry fairies, along with herb, insect, and bat fairies. Her new friends didn't believe her at first, that there really were bat fairies, until they looked up types of fairies in the fairy handbook.

Mimosa's fairy handbook was a different color than those of her friends. Hers was a pale, sky blue color since it originated in Montana; whereas, all of the native Texas fairies carried handbooks of a fawn tan color. When she looked up types of fairies, this is the information the handbook shared:

Types of Fairy Spirits: Fairies derive their spirits from numerous sources. Some of the more common spirits come from flowers, berries, herbs, and tree blossoms. Fairy spirits can also come from insects like dragonflies, bees, butterflies, moths, fireflies, and beetles. There are also fairies whose spirits come from small birds, animals, lizards, amphibians, and sea creatures such as finches, robins, wrens, sparrows, moles, shrews, bats, sea horses, starfish, oysters, salamanders, and toads.