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    Wishes for Beginners
    Wishes for Beginners
    Wishes for Beginners
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Wishes for Beginners

    By Eileen Cook

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The second in a series of books about Willow's adventures as she masters her secret fairy powers, navigates sprite training, tries to ignore her perfect older sister, and maintains a friendship with Katie, the most un-normal of humans. Miranda, the most popular girl in fourth grade, comes to school with exciting news: her older cousin is getting married, and Miranda will be in the bridal party! This is great news for Willow, because Miranda's cousin has hired Willow's mom to provide the cake. She is certain this is her chance to finally get closer to Miranda. She makes it sound as if she is very involved in her mother's bakery and wedding planning business. Suddenly Willow is gaining popularity as the fourth grade expert on all things wedding. The only one who doesn’t seem impressed is her best friend, Katie. Willow thinks she’s finally arrived when Miranda invites her to an exclusive birthday slumber party. The only problem is that it is so exclusive, Katie hasn’t been invited. Then, when Willow tries to use some fairy magic to make Miranda’s cousin’s wedding even bigger and better, everything goes horribly wrong. She might ruin the wedding, blow her first slumber party, and lose her best friend all in one. It’s going to take magic to survive fourth grade.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAladdin
    Release dateJun 14, 2011
    ISBN9781416998150
    Wishes for Beginners
    Author

    Eileen Cook

    Eileen Cook spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. She is the author of The Almost Truth, Unraveling Isobel, The Education of Hailey Kendrick, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood, and What Would Emma Do? as well as the Fourth Grade Fairy series. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and dogs. Visit her at EileenCook.com.

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    Reviews for Wishes for Beginners

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I haven't read this first book in this series, but I found this book to be quite delightful. Willow in a fairy godmother who has decided to attend human (or as the fairies call them "humdrums") school. Naturally, Willow must keep her status as a fairy a secret from the humans. So not only does Willow have to contend with the normal fourth grade issues like best friends, boys, and being popular (or not), she also has to try and learn to be a good fairy godmother. This includes learning to grants wishes.Willow's two main issues in this book is trying to keep her secret from her best friend Katie, who always wants to come to her house. This would of course be difficult because Willow's mom, dad, and older sister don't really know how to act around humans. Willow also has a desire to grant her very first wish to a girl in her class, Miranda. Miranda is going to be a junior bridesmaid and desperately wants to keep her very loose front tooth from falling out before the wedding. To make this wish come true, Willow is going to need help from a tooth fairy. Tooth fairies are not know for being cooperative about deviating from their schedules. What will Willow do?Willow was a fun main character. Naturally she gets in trouble with her wacky ideas, but she really has good intentions. This book was so cute and would be a really fun read for young girls. I'm sure they can feel Willow's pain even without magical powers. The ideas of loyalty and friendship are also discussed. Mostly though, this is just a really fun book.Galley provided by publisher for review.

    Book preview

    Wishes for Beginners - Eileen Cook

    one

    The most exciting thing that could ever happen to my fourth-grade class would be:

    a. aliens from outer space come to suck us all up in their spaceship and take us to their planet where they make us their rulers.

    b. TV producers want to make a show about our class and we’re all going to become famous. We’ll wear giant sunglasses and carry our dogs around in handbags and everyone will want our autographs.

    c. the president has selected our class to be his official kid advisors. We’ll have fancy dinners at the White House while he asks us what we think needs to happen in the world. Personally, I plan to make sure he saves the polar bear.

    d. none of the above.

    *   *   *

    I knew something really exciting must have happened because there was a big circle of people on the playground. Someone squealed and a couple of the girls were jumping up and down. They were bouncing all around like popcorn.

    I saw my best friend Katie Hillegonds sitting on top of the slide. She liked to sit up there where she could see everything. I ran over to her. What’s going on?

    I got a new book. Katie held it out. It’s all about NASA. My mom said it was for older kids, but I told her if I’m going to be an astronaut I couldn’t read little kid books. Did you know there’s no sound in space? She didn’t wait for me to answer. The book is good, but I think it would be better with more pictures. She flipped through the pages.

    I didn’t always understand humans, or, as we call them in the fairy community, humdrums. I come from a long line of fairy godmothers, but I always wanted to be just a plain humdrum. Or at least that was what I wanted until I learned how much fun being magical could be. After all if I wasn’t magical I wouldn’t be able to talk to my dog and have him talk back. Also if I hadn’t been magical I also wouldn’t have been able to save my sister from being eaten by a lizard. It wasn’t a large lizard or anything, my sister was really small at the time, sort of firefly-size. Even though it wasn’t a giant, mutant lizard, the rescue plan still required me to be pretty clever. Not that I’m bragging or anything. I’d decided that I would stick with being magical and have a humdrum as a friend instead.

    Until this school year I’d always attended the Cottingley Fairy Academy across town. I’d convinced my parents to let me study humdrums up close as long as no one figured out that I was a fairy. I’d only been going to Riverside Elementary for a couple of months. There were still a lot of things I didn’t understand, but I was sure about this. No one in our class was excited that Katie had a book about rockets.

    Neat. It looks like a cool book. One tip for getting along with humdrums is that you should always act interested in things they’re interested in, even if you aren’t. For example, if your best friend has a pet bird you should pretend that you find it really fascinating that they clean themselves by having dust baths. (Even though taking a dust bath sounds like a stupid way to get clean.) So, do you know why everyone else is so excited? I asked trying to pull Katie’s attention back.

    Katie looked down at the cluster of girls. Oh. Miranda’s going to be in a wedding.

    I watched Miranda’s friend Bethany act like she was going to faint because she was so thrilled. Bethany has always been a drama queen, but even the other girls seemed excited. Is it that big of a deal?

    Katie closed her book with a snap. Exactly! Who cares that she gets to be a bridesmaid? If you ask me, a bunch of wedding cake doesn’t make up for having to wear a fancy dress that itches and uncomfortable shoes.

    My forehead wrinkled while I thought about it. I could think of a lot of things that sounded more fun than wearing uncomfortable shoes. However, my mom granted more wedding wishes than any other. Fairy godmothers spent a lot of time on romance, so there must be something to it.

    My dress is going to be light pink, and we’re going to carry bouquets of pink and white roses, I overheard Miranda say. The cluster of girls all sighed together.

    Roses mean true love, Bethany said. Every flower has a meaning, you know. A few of the girls nodded. Bethany always had to be an expert on everything. You have to be really careful about what you put in a wedding bouquet or you could doom the entire marriage.

    I wasn’t sure about the meaning of roses, but I was pretty sure Bethany was wrong about the part about the wrong flowers ruining things.

    I wonder what dandelions mean? Paula asked.

    Bethany ignored Paula.

    I’m not just some regular junior bridesmaid. I’m responsible for holding my cousin’s bouquet during the wedding ceremony so she can concentrate on getting married. Miranda shrugged. It’s a pretty important job.

    Everyone was silent for a moment as if they were awed by what Miranda would have to do. They were acting like she would be diffusing a bomb instead of holding a bunch of flowers. Humdrums were very confusing sometimes.

    The bell rang. Katie jumped up and surfed down the slide with her arms out to keep her balance. I went down the ladder. If I tried to go down standing, I would fall for sure, and if I sat down to slide, Bethany would make fun of me for acting like a kid. Fourth grade is really complicated. Sometimes it’s okay to be a kid and other times everyone acts grown up. The hard part is figuring out which time you’re supposed to act which way. It would be a lot easier if there were a rule book. And so part of my deal with my parents to attend humdrum school was that I had agreed to do presentations about humdrums to other sprites at the fairy academy. How was I supposed to help future fairy godmothers understand humdrums when I couldn’t make sense of what they did half the time?

    I think it’s cool you’re going to be a junior bridesmaid, I said to Miranda as we lined up to go inside. I’d love to see your dress sometime. Katie was my best friend, but I still couldn’t help being fascinated by Miranda. It wasn’t just me. Everyone in our entire school liked Miranda, including the really cranky lunch lady who would give her extra applesauce. Even the fifth graders liked Miranda and they spent most of their time ignoring the rest of us. I couldn’t help thinking it would be really cool to have Miranda as a friend, too.

    Do you think she’s going to wear her bridesmaid dress to school? Bethany asked. Duh, Willow. She rolled her eyes at Paula.

    I ignored Bethany. Maybe you could bring in a picture of it.

    "I should bring the picture of my cousin’s dress. It is the most beautiful dress you’ve ever seen. It was on the cover of Brides magazine. It’s strapless and the skirt has layers of lace and sort of swooshes down with all these beads and sequins on it."

    All the girls around us gave another sigh of pleasure. I pulled my small humdrum notebook out of my bag and scribbled in it. Dresses are better the more sparkle they have. You never knew how humdrum information could be useful. Someday I might have to grant a dress wish and now I would know to add a bit of extra glitter.

    Nathan, who was behind Miranda in line, snatched the notebook out of my hand and held it above his head. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that he was the tallest person in our class. Got your diary! He yelled out.

    Give it back. I jumped up, trying to take it back from him, but I couldn’t reach. He moved in a circle laughing.

    Who wants to hear Willow’s secrets? His friends laughed, which just encouraged him. "Dresses

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