In 1917, in Cottingley, England, a girl named Elsie took a picture of her younger cousin, Frances. Exquisitely illustrated with art by Eliza Wheeler as well as the original photos taken by the girls.

Illustrator’s agent: Jennifer Rofé, Andrea Brown Literary. The true story of British cousins who fooled the world for more than 60 years with a remarkable hoax, photographs of real fairies. This recounting of a fanciful, enchanting fraud will leave younger children guessing until the end, and many more readers will embrace the suspension of disbelief, a phenomenon Frances ascribed to the British believers of that day: “They wanted to be taken in.” Ages 4–7. The willowy pranksters, a pale woodland palette, and butterfly-dotted skies match the English fairy-tale setting. An inviting layout combines Wheeler’s delicately styled ink-and-watercolor illustrations with archival images of the girls’ photographs and an excerpt from Doyle’s article. Some readers saw it as a historic discovery, others thought the photos were fake.” Silent on the subject for decades, the two women later confessed their deception, albeit leaving one mysterious photo up for debate.

Cousins Frances Griffiths and Elise Wright copied elaborate drawings of female dancers in flowing garb from a book, then photographed themselves outdoors with these “sprites.” After Doyle published the photos, alongside his article about fairies, in a popular magazine, “everyone was aflutter. Nobleman ( Boys of Steel) resurrects the story of an early 20th-century hoax that pulled the wool over the eyes of many Britons, including Arthur Conan Doyle.

Fairy Spell by Marc Tyler Nobleman