The Cottington Archive reluctantly announces that more information about the infamous Lady Cottington has a scrapbook compiled by the fairy smasher herself of her correspondence with luminaries such as Queen Victoria, Annie Oakley, Igor Stravinsky, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Andrew Lang, P.T. Barnum, and more. All about fairies, these hilarious letters contain everything from wisdom to suggestions to chastisement. Lady Cottington has made notes in the margins not to mention smashed fairies throughout (will she EVER STOP this nasty habit?!). And the fairies...ah the fairies...they too have done their part, sprinkling magic and mayhem throughout. Personally, I love Terry Jones's strange yet very creative story and Brian Froud's magical artwork in this book. Terry Jones has always been one of my favorites in the “Python” gang of movies and the old BBC shows of “Monty Python & the Flying Circus” and Froud's gorgeous watercolor artwork is enchanting…even if the fairies all met an untimely squashing by a naughty little girl.

Without spoiling too much, this is a photo album/diary written by two sisters. The older one began taking pictures of "fairies", which she also wrote about, but unfortunately died shortly after finishing the diary. Her younger sister finds the diary and begins reading it, adding notes of her own, and squishing fairies while she's in the process. It sounds very dull and tidy that way but the ending is quite interesting! A friend got it for me as a birthday gift not long after I read it, thinking that it would be perfect for faerie loving me, and I gave that grin that says to most people "Oh, I LOVE IT!" but really means "Oh, I love YOU, so I'll PRETEND to love it!" I looove the look of this book! It looks worn out a bit and it feels lovely. I also enjoyed the illustrations done by Brian Froud. If you don't know who he is, he worked on some creatures for Jim Henson's Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I love those movies, especially Labyrinth! Oh, Jareth, how I love you!!!An amusing quote: "Ah! Je borsten zijn witter dan een blanco cheque!"which no doubt reads as "Ah! Your breasts are whiter than a blank cheque!"in the original. One of the things I love is how Angelica's age is captured. When she's younger the writing style reflects that and I didn't realise how twisted her action of squashing the fairies was quite till the end. But she grows up and she maintains this naivety of people who don't want to get any older. Although I am a fan of Terry Jones's work, I didn't like this book as much as I did the second. It is funny, but the squashing of fairies got a bit old and the book ended rather abruptly. In Lady Cottington's Fairy Album, Brian Froud managed to add some real depth and poignancy to the story. Plus there were photographs!

I enjoyed this book. It was like I was reading someone's diary, lol. I love books like that. I also like how the "writing" in the book starts of child like and then it changes to more of an adult "writing" as Lady Cottongton grows older. By child like, I mean misspelled words and things like that. CAVEAT: The fairies pictured in this book are caught in poses of agony, and frequently nude too. Should not be viewed by impressionable children under age 34. I wanted to love this book, but the thought of smushing faeries, even if it's just to capture their essences (which really sounds dirty now that I think about it) put a bad taste in my mouth (which furthers that dirtiness earlier in the sentence, I guess).

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This, however, is a translation of the first book, with text by Terry Jones and artwork by Brian Froud. My eight year old daughter received this book as a gift recently and I was flipping through the gorgeous drawings and noticed that some of the fairies within were nude. After seeing that I thought I'd better read this before my daughter does.