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Five-year-old writes book about fairies for British charity

Five-year-old Lydia Port-Burke has self-published a fairy tale now available on iTunes. Proceeds for the book will go to BBC Children in Need.

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REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
A rainbow is seen behind a Union Jack flag in Kilmarnock, Scotland March 25, 2014.

Lydia Port-Burke has written her first book – "Fairy Mission to Find Stripe" – at the age of five.

In doing so, she has undoubtedly made 20-something writers all across the British Isles start to feel old.

According to the Ely Standard, Lydia's inspiration came idea from helping her parents plant seeds in their yard. Lydia decided that she should create her own fairy garden in order to attract the magical beings to their backyard.

One thing led to another, and soon the fairy garden was a fairy village, complete with fairies made from modeling clay living in fairy houses made from her father's old shoes.

Lydia's mother, Eleanor Port, told the Ely Standard the tale of how Lydia's story came about: "There was a lot of role play with the fairy characters and chattering about what they got up to. One weekend Lydia fell from a climbing frame and hurt her knee. She had to rest, which was when I overheard her creating a story to occupy her time. The words were all hers and were put down on paper.”

Her parents also helped Lydia illustrate her adventurous story about a fairy family's quest to save the kidnapped fairy Stripe from nefarious goblins.

At an age when many of us could barely use complete sentences, Lydia has become an author and an illustrator, but that's not all. She's also a philanthropist.

Her book, which unfortunately is not available in the US at this time, will support the British charity Children in Need. A portion of each sale of Lydia's book on iTunes will go to the organization.

According to the BBC Children in Need website, the organization provides grants to projects in the United Kingdom which have a "focus on children and young people who are disadvantaged."

Lydia's book will contribute to that goal and no doubt entertain British readers along the way. It's not clear whether Lydia and her parents have any plans to make her first literary work available outside Britain, but here's at least one Monitor contributor who would like to read it.

Editor's note: "Fairy Mission to Find Stripe" is now available on iTunes in the United States.

Weston Williams is a Monitor contributor.

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