Scary Children’s Story
Feb. 2nd, 2018 18:11![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nalkarj posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
findthatbookHi, everyone—
New here. I’ve been trying to find this story for a while, to no avail; I wonder if anyone here would be interested.
(I previously found another children’s spooky story, Janni Lee Simner’s “Drawing the Moon,” with the help of one of these communities, but unfortunately this one has been more difficult.)
This story might have been in one of those Bruce Coville collections [in which I had previously found “Drawing the Moon”], but I'm not completely sure; the tone doesn't seem like the stories collected in one of those. I really hated this story as a child and probably would not want to read it even now—it's absurdly mean-spirited, to say the least, for a children's story—but I'd just like to know what it is to assuage the memory.
The plot (SPOILERS) is like this: the protagonist is a young girl—I have no idea what her name was, but let's say it was something like “Janie.”
Well, one day Janie discovers there is a community of fairies that live in the woods near her house. She enters the fairyland--plays and dances and dines with the fairies, all the sort of thing mythology advises not to do, etc.
Now, Janie has read mythology and fairy tales and regrets consuming fairy-food, for she knows she'll be forced to stay in fairyland. At the last moment, though, she manages to escape, coming to a realization that it is better to stay with parents who love her.
This is where we would expect the story to end, but Janie rushes back home and is so happy to see her mom and dad. That night, she goes to bed, but she wakes up in the middle of the night, thirsty, and goes downstairs to get a drink of water. On the stairs, she hears her parents saying something like this:
"Boy, Janie's really boring, isn't she?"
"Oh, yeah. I wish we'd never had her. What a brat."
Janie rushes out of the house, crying, and goes back to rejoin the fairies.
Yes, this was a remarkably mean-spirited children's story that bothered me--as you can tell from "Drawing the Moon," my library had the most unusual collections of children's stories, some of which were probably inappropriate for the age group.
OK, so does anyone know this story?
Thanks in advance!
New here. I’ve been trying to find this story for a while, to no avail; I wonder if anyone here would be interested.
(I previously found another children’s spooky story, Janni Lee Simner’s “Drawing the Moon,” with the help of one of these communities, but unfortunately this one has been more difficult.)
This story might have been in one of those Bruce Coville collections [in which I had previously found “Drawing the Moon”], but I'm not completely sure; the tone doesn't seem like the stories collected in one of those. I really hated this story as a child and probably would not want to read it even now—it's absurdly mean-spirited, to say the least, for a children's story—but I'd just like to know what it is to assuage the memory.
The plot (SPOILERS) is like this: the protagonist is a young girl—I have no idea what her name was, but let's say it was something like “Janie.”
Well, one day Janie discovers there is a community of fairies that live in the woods near her house. She enters the fairyland--plays and dances and dines with the fairies, all the sort of thing mythology advises not to do, etc.
Now, Janie has read mythology and fairy tales and regrets consuming fairy-food, for she knows she'll be forced to stay in fairyland. At the last moment, though, she manages to escape, coming to a realization that it is better to stay with parents who love her.
This is where we would expect the story to end, but Janie rushes back home and is so happy to see her mom and dad. That night, she goes to bed, but she wakes up in the middle of the night, thirsty, and goes downstairs to get a drink of water. On the stairs, she hears her parents saying something like this:
"Boy, Janie's really boring, isn't she?"
"Oh, yeah. I wish we'd never had her. What a brat."
Janie rushes out of the house, crying, and goes back to rejoin the fairies.
Yes, this was a remarkably mean-spirited children's story that bothered me--as you can tell from "Drawing the Moon," my library had the most unusual collections of children's stories, some of which were probably inappropriate for the age group.
OK, so does anyone know this story?
Thanks in advance!
no subject
Date: February 3rd, 2018 03:56 (UTC)no subject
Date: February 7th, 2018 00:31 (UTC)Thanks for the reply! I’m a great fan of Roald Dahl (both children’s and adult’s), and—while I agree with you that it’s mean-spirited in that sort of vein, what I remember about the story doesn’t strike me as particularly Dahlian. Someone else recommended Vivian Vande Valde or Janni Lee Simner (who wrote the other one I finally found), and theirs is more the style, I think, even though I haven’t yet been able to find this story in either writer’s bibliography.
Thanks again! :)
no subject
Date: May 11th, 2018 22:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: May 22nd, 2018 01:25 (UTC)The main thing that helps older posts is that people will periodically look through the "lost book" tag, and try to answer the ones that haven't been found yet. Unfortunately, this book does not sound familiar, and google has not come up with any answers. :( I'm sorry I can't be more help. I hope someone will figure it out eventually.