The wish fairy: Too many cats! By Lisa Ann Scott, illustrated by Heather Burns

Brooke, a black girl, is playing in the meadow with her cat Patches when she rescues a dragonfly… and it turns out to be a fairy! Calla the fairy has blue skin and an adventurous nature; she’s ventured just a little too far from her home in Fairvana. Now that Brooke has saved her life, she must grant her seven wishes.

After careful though, Brooke wishes for one hundred cats. If one cat is awesome, more cats must be even better, right? Wrong. It’s fun at first, especially when her friend Izzy comes along, but she quickly discovers some problems. First, her own cat, Patches, has disappeared. Then there’s feeding and taking care of all those cats… then she makes an unpleasant discovery about where they came from! However, despite these drawbacks she and Izzy have fun. They clean out their savings to buy food for the cats (no endless supply of money here), talk Izzy’s parents into letting her keep one very friendly stray cat, Pumpkin, and make an extra trip to the library to pick up some books on taking care of cats. The story ends well with a nice set-up for the next volume, as Brooke plans her next wishes.

Black and white illustrations sprinkled throughout the book mostly focus on cute pictures of cats, but there are some sweet pictures of fairies, along with some gentle lectures on real friendship as the girls discover Calla’s social difficulties. I was thrilled to discover a beginning chapter book where the minority is the main character - NOT the friend or sidekick and she seems to be prominently featured in all the succeeding books as well.

Verdict: For fairy lovers this will be a great fill-in series, with an added fillip of diversity.

ISBN: 9781338120974; Published 2018 by Scholastic; Borrowed from another library in my consortium