The Reading Warehouse

In 1917, in Cottingley, England, a girl named Elsie took a picture of her younger cousin, Frances. Also in the photo was a group of fairies, fairies that the girls insisted were real. Through a remarkable set of circumstances, that photograph and the ones that followed came to be widely believed as evidence of real fairies. It was not until 1983 that the girls, then late in life, confessed that the Cottingley Fairies were a hoax. Their take is an extraordinary slice of history, from a time when anything in a photograph was assumed to be fact and it was possible to trick an eager public into believing something magical. Exquisitely illustrated with art and the original fairy photographs.

Marc Tyler Nobleman writes books for all ages. His titles include Thirty Minutes Over Oregon: A Japanese Pilot's World War II Story, Fairy Spell: How Two Girls Convinced the World That Fairies Are Real, Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman, and Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, which inspired both the Hulu feature documentary Batman & Bill and a TED Talk. Follow him on Twitter @MarcTNobleman and on Instragram @mtnobleman.