Why I'm not a Children's Librarian

So this week is the Fairy Tea Party at the library. If you're not familiar with the Fairy Tea it's basically where little girls and their mothers dress up as fairies or in Sunday dress, eat a light catered meal, promenade in their fairy finery, and basically revel in the explosion of glitter and tulle.

The Children's librarians love this event. They spend hours making their costumes, putting their makeup on, and talking to all the little girls.


So yesterday I had a meeting in the board room which is over on the Children's side of the library. As I was walking over, I passed several fairy dolls and other fairy decor including life size fairy mannequins that rotate on pedestals and a small fairy perched on a swing inside an elaborate bird cage.

As I was passing all of this, I was laughing to myself that I found all the fairies more creepy than charming. When AE walked into the meeting, she immediately commented on the probability of having nightmares about creepy fairies.

Then Ann-Marie walked in and she mentioned that the fairy in the cage was really disturbing. We started to laugh because just about everyone that came to the meeting mentioned the creep factor of the fairies. As we were laughing CL (who is in charge of the whole event came in). Needless to say that she heartily disagreed with our assessment of the fairies. She did however, tell us that the fairy in the birdcage need not frighten anyone because she was of course trapped in her cage!

I did concede that the fairies are dark and capricious in all the adult and teen books. So maybe my point of view is a little skewed from this, but there's just something about little fairy figures with their pointy faces that creeps out a lot of adult librarians and is somehow entirely lost on the Children's librarians.