How to Ditch Your Fairy: hilarious kids book about the problems with fairies

Justine Larbalastier's new young adult novel How to Ditch Your Fairy is a delightful departure from her earlier Magic and Madness trilogy (itself a very fine set of books!): in New Avalon, most people have "fairies" -- invisible, possibly mythological beings that confer wondrous and confounding powers on their owners.

Charlie, the book's hero, has a less-than-stellar fairy: a parking fairy that helps her find a spot no matter where she is (and no matter that she is too young to drive and cordially loathes cars on general principles). She is a high-achieving student athlete at a special, hyper-streamed, hyper-disciplined school for athletic children (other kids go to arts schools and other specialized schools), where her life is regimented to the millimetre, and where she is under constant pressure to perform.

Her world turns upside down when she meets Steffi, a young boy from a distant city whom she falls hard for. Steffi forces her to challenge her assumptions and inspires her to try out a series of ever-more-desperate move to get rid of her fairy, which she believes will solve all her problems. Of course, the harder she tries, the worse the problems get.

Larbalastier's gift for language and dialect comes through as clearly here as it did in Magic and Madness, but this book is a lot lighter, more fun, and funnier, with tons of brilliant little comedy licks arising from the interplay of different fairies in Charlie's social circle.

This is clearly marketed as a "girl book," but every kid would love to have a "fairy" that conferred some amazing power on them, no matter what the kid's sex. How to Ditch Your Fairy at Amazon

See also:
Kids' fantasy novel blends magic with modernity - Tolkien meets Coupland

• [dragonfrog]

  I’m personally conflicted on whether a parking fairy would be better or worse than no fairy at all – I don’t keep a car, have no plans to acquire one, and will probably never move to a neighbourhood or take a job that would require one.

  Now if a parking fairy helped me find good spots to lock up my bike where it wouldn’t get stolen, knocked over, rained on, or driven over by inept car parkers, that would be awesome.

• [tom funk]

  Thanks for this posting, Cory. Before I found your page, I had gone to Amazon and searched for “hilarious young adult fiction” and the results were dismal — mostly just books whose excerpted text contained the word “hilarious.”

  Then I did a Google search for “hilarious young adult fiction” and voila, there you were with a great, relevant suggestion. Thanks for knocking another item off my Christmas list!

• [earbox]

  @3: Depends on the boy. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I’m a 26-year-old male (although I had some issues with the ending, unrelated to my age and gender). If he likes light urban fantasy and isn’t afraid of a book with a female protagonist, I’d say yes.

• [johnfoster]

  while I haven’t read the book I say that this stupid girl will grow up later to feel great remorse about giving up what could be the perfect thing to have following you around for a lifetime.

• [manicbassman]

  a parking fairy would be an excellent fairy to have…

• [dragonfrog]

  When I read the final link – “How to Ditch your Fairy at Amazon” – I thought, it seems like that would be a lot harder than ditching a fairy at a regular bookstore.

• [Kat Johnston]

  I wouldn’t ditch them… I’d collect em! Gotta catch em all, and all that rot… *snickers* Good parking spaces, the (not so) unique ability to tie a cherry stem into a knot using only my tongue and an affinity with werewolves await me, if only I can find the right damn fairies…

• [coldspell]

  I was expecting this to be a self-help book akin to “The Secret”.