Age Range: 3 to 7
The Fairytale Hairdresser and the Sugar Plum Fairy introduces characters from The Nutcracker, it’s a lovely story for the festive season. As with all the Fairytale Hairdresser stories we love spotting all the different fairytale and nursery rhyme characters in Lauren Beard’s illustrations.
The Story: It’s the day of the Winter Ballet and Kittie and Clara are happily decorating the Christmas tree with ribbons and Clara’s nutcracker. But The Sugar Plum Fairy is sad as Prince Armand is missing. She waves her wand and Kittie and her friends are transported to The Land of Sweets to help her find Prince Armand but he’s nowhere to be found. When the evil Mouse King and Queen arrive, the nutcracker leads the fight against them but as the danger heightens Kittie and Clara come to his rescue and defeat The Mouse King and Queen. Then Clara kisses the nutcracker and something magical happens…
The Fairytale Hairdresser and The Sugar Plum Fairy is a really feelgood story. Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella and Rose all join Kittie in The Land of Sweets which is hidden in the Christmas tree. But The Land of Sweets is constantly in danger from the mice who want to eat all the sweets. As Prince Armand is missing, The Sugar Plum Fairy brings the toys on the Christmas tree to life. Despite the jack-in the-box and the teddy bears’ attempts to hold off the mice they are all in danger until Kittie comes up with an ingenious plan. With the mice safely locked away the show can go on!
Lauren must have had such fun illustrating The Land of Sweets with its Candy Cane Tower and the fruit salad lollipops that are as big as the characters! There are Love Hearts, cola bottles and even a chocolate pond to fish in! Many of the details in the illustrations make us laugh, I love Little Red Riding Hood’s scarf and my daughter loves Rapunzel’s huge bun (she thinks it is hilarious that she can dance with so much hair on top of her head!). The names of the shops are also really original and pertinent to particular characters, for example. Miss Peep’s Wool Shop and my favourite, Gold-e-locks locksmiths!
With its sparkly, tactile, glittery cover this is a wonderful story to read during the Christmas season. Sleeping Beauty is quoted on the back cover as saying ‘This book is dreamy!’. We agree!
Author: Abie Longstaff / Illustrator: Lauren Beard
My girls adore the fairytale Hairdresser books 🙂 #TriedTested
This is a lovely one to read at Christmas 🙂
It sounds a very sweet story and one full of sugar and spice and all things nice! #TriedTested
That’s a lovely way to describe it 🙂
This book sounds delightful. I will have to look out for it. #TriedTested
It is! I hope you enjoy it when you find it Helena 🙂
My girls adore this series of books, such a great take on the classic fairytales, thanks for sharing with #ReadWithMe
We love The Fairytale Hairdresser stories. Abie and Lauren do a great Fairytale Hairdresser event if you ever get the chance to see them at a book festival 🙂
If the front cover is anything to go by, I can see what you mean about it being fun to illustrate. I like the idea of this take on a traditional story.
Abie gives The Nutcracker a fun and festive twist 🙂
This sounds like great fun. I always like it when there are little jokes and funny details in the illustrations.
The illustrations are brilliant. There are so many nursery rhyme and fairytale characters to spot 🙂
Sounds lovely although I don’t think I could convince my boys #readwithme
They may like some of the other Fairytale Hairdresser stories.
Sounds fun. I’ll have to wait until my grand-daughter is a bit older so we can read it together 🙂
#readwithme
I’m sure your grand daughter will love it 🙂
We’ve never read any of these books but they sound so sweet. I love that Sleeping Beauty has reviewed it too ? #readwithme
Sleeping Beauty’s quote is on the back cover along with The Three Little Pigs who would like to dance in ‘Swine Lake’ 🙂