For many fairy-lovers, Liza Gardner Walsh needs no introduction. Also known as “The Fairy Lady,” this beloved children’s author has been writing books about fairy house building for more than a decade. When I was eight years old, I spoke to Liza and built a fairy house in a video promoting her first three books. More than ten years later, I sat down with her to talk about her latest work and her approach to children’s play and imagination in nature.
Although Walsh has been writing since she was old enough to pick up a pen, it wasn’t until she was a mother of two and a full-time librarian that she started writing about fairies. Inspired by folklore and the magic that fairy house building brought to her young children, Walsh wrote The Fairyhouse Handbook in 2012. Walsh continued to publish seventeen more books, nine of which are about fairies.
Growing up, Walsh spent time at the beach building sandcastles and creating “magical worlds in the sand.” She also built mouse houses, doll houses, and dioramas with her mother. “I wish I had known about fairy houses,” she says. “I would have loved them.” As a mother, Walsh says fairy houses were one of her children’s favorite pastimes. “It’s this magical window that doesn’t last forever, but it’s really quite wonderful,” she recalls. The Fairyhouse Handbook was partly inspired by this time in her family’s life and was a way to share the activity with other families.
The book provides step-by-step instructions for how to build a fairy house, ideas for crafts and activities, and fairy lore. “When that book came out, it just opened this whole world up to me,” says Walsh. “It connected my children’s librarian work, the work that I was doing as a mother, and my lifelong love of children’s books.”
Today, children seem to be spending more and more time on screens, but Walsh thinks fairy house building might be exactly what they need to get back outside. Walsh worries that the constant exposure to screens and lack of nature in children’s lives today is damaging their imagination and innate ability to tell stories. She hopes that her approach to nature through play and storytelling can provide parents a “shortcut” to getting their kids outside, similar to sneaking spinach into brownies.
Walsh explains that protecting children’s narrative muscle in early childhood sets them up for success as they enter middle and high school. She calls this “future-proofing the imagining.” When children are building a fairy house, they often imagine the experience of the house through the fairy’s eyes. Where will they sleep? Will they be warm enough? Would they prefer berries or acorns for dinner? “It’s the complete antidote to screens,” says Walsh.
In addition to building storytelling and narrative skills in early childhood, fairy house building exposes children to the countless health benefits of nature. “When you encourage kids to fall in love with nature and be comfortable in it, not only will they take care of the earth later, but it’s also really good for your physical health. It’s good for balance, dexterity, frustration tolerance, learning how to navigate uneven surfaces, and developing gross motor skills and fine motor skills,” says Walsh.
It’s not hard to convince children to spend more time outside building fairy houses. For many children, the time seems to slip by when they’re immersed in nature and their imaginations. “You forget you’re outside and then all of a sudden you’ve been outside for three hours, and you’ve created this wonderful little house, and you can tell a story about it,” says Walsh. In fact, some say that a sign that fairies are near is “the sense of time slipping by without you knowing it and uncontrollable laughter.”
Although the fairy books have long been her bread and butter, Walsh says she doesn’t plan on writing more about them. “I have a real understanding of the world of children and fairies; it is almost innate at this point,” she says, “but I’m not sure I’ll be writing another fairy house book. I don’t know what else I could say about them.”
Though she isn’t planning on writing more about fairies, Walsh doesn’t plan to stop writing anytime soon. She is currently working on her next book, The Seaglass Store, which she started ten years ago. The book tells the story of a girl who wants a game to go a certain way, but her friends change it. It’s about “learning to go with the flow and work with others,” says Walsh. Having worked in schools, Walsh understands how adapting to change can be challenging for certain kids.
Beyond the fairy books, Walsh has written a wider shelf of guides for getting kids outside, including Muddy Boots, filled with forts, foraging, and bird watching activities, and the Treasure Hunter’s Handbook, for kids drawn to geocaching, metal detecting, and panning for gold.
As someone who has loved Walsh’s books since childhood, I’m excited to see where this new book leads. Her books have opened magical worlds for countless children, allowing them to grow into stewards of nature and imaginative storytellers.
You can find The Fairyhouse Handbook, the Fairy House Kit, Muddy Boots, and the Treasure Hunter’s Handbook at Blue Otter Toys.
Claire Wilson spent two years in Maine as a child, where she got to know Liza Gardner Walsh. She is now a Book and Media Studies student at the University of Toronto.