Maligna wants to extinguish all the stars in the universe to make children unhappy. The raven king, Grip sets out to foil her hideous plan with help from the Peacock Emperor. Good and evil…that’s what the best fairy stories are made of, and Giselle Sellier’s horribly funny story for children taps into a global subconscious which is probably as old as mankind itself. In a tale of bubbling cauldrons and bats’ blood delights, she wonders what might happen if a wicked witch put a spell on the stars that turned them out at night. Would small children everywhere have nightmares when there were no fairy lights in the sky to comfort them during the long hours of blackness? And how could the witch’s spell be broken so that children could sleep easily again? The answer lies in nature itself, she says, and the centuries old totems that repel evil spirits. This is a charming little book, that even comes with a short glossary of the malign – for the more curious child.
