“Once upon a summer’s memory” is the charming opener to Vancouver author Nancy Hundal’s latest picture book. A little girl named Miranda invites her friends to a twilight garden party for her midsummer birthday. She hopes that the fairies who “gamboled farther back, where old cedar’s fragrant shoulders drooped protectively around the garden below” will join the festivities. Her brother and her mother are skeptical, but Miranda’s faith is strong, and she plans a party to please the fairies.The text is deeply layered with expressive and precise language like the above quote, making this book a delight to read aloud.

The illustrations by Don Kilby in gentle natural-looking blues and greens create the impression of looking through a soft-focus filter. Kilby uses many bird’s-eye and ant’s-eye views to bring us closer to the perspective of fairies. In one case, this creates a disturbing image, where the focal point of the page is the knob-end of a staircase newel post that appears at first glance to have an ill fairy draped across it (it’s actually a doll). There are also a few incongruencies between the text and the illustrations (for example, the text mentions two friends by name as party guests while the illustrations show three), but the magic of the story is strong enough to overcome these minor anomalies.

This enchanting picture book will captivate little girls, especially those who have midsummer birthdays or like to play in the garden.