Mark wrote to me from Canada. He wanted a gift for his two daughters who had stayed by his side at a difficult time. He explained that when they were small children, he would read them fairy tales and call the girls “my fairies”; hence the idea for my bookmarks.
I asked him to tell me something about them. He said that Aileen, the eldest, is sunny, cheerful, smiling; Susan is sensitive, shy and reserved. Two beautiful fairies!
This is the result.
Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
G.K. Chesterton
The bond between father and daughter is special, rife with complicity and mutual admiration, encouragement, affection, emotion. Life together is dotted with fundamental opportunities for growth, fathers have the responsibility to transmit courage, a sense of the beauty of life, values and a desire to dream. And books help fathers in their task in a natural, profound, engaging way. It was in those quiet moments together, safe in strong paternal arms, that Mark’s daughters absorbed fantastic, frightening and amusing stories – and in their minds, understanding and values took shape and became indelibly imprinted on their young hearts.
Mark is a lover of books, and he passed this passion on to his girls. He asked me to help him give them something that would remind them of those tender moments; something that would evoke the worlds that inhabited those pages and transformed his daughters over time into princesses, adventurous explorers and … magical fairies. They were indeed fairies, those little girls. They flew through the thousand stories that would transform them into the women they are now. Like the fairies or Sleeping Beauty in the woods, each young girl had their gift, their distinguishing characteristic that their father proudly described to me:
Aileen’s joyful positivity and Susan’s reserved sensitivity.
That’s how these two bookmarks came to be, and each one witnesses to the nature of the daughter who would receive it, through the enchanted mirror of a remembered dream.