Emma Doesn't Believe in Fairies

with: Elias Linnekuhl (Illustrator)
Reading and conversation
presented by Thalia
recommended from age 7

Do fairies exist? Emma would answer that question quite decisively: of course not! Emma is eleven years old, finds school exhausting, and is interested in things she can observe, touch, rescue, or research: plants, snails, animals, the overgrown park next door. She is not a girl who believes in fairy tales. She is a girl who wants to go outside.

But what if the world out there is much bigger than it seems? What if a strange insect lures her deep into a tangle of brambles? And what if she suddenly finds herself on a blooming meadow - beautiful, mysterious, and not at all safe? In the next moment, Emma has shrunk to the size of a mouse. Above her flutter creatures with wings. Fairies, then? Actually, yes. Except these fairies are far from delighted that a human has discovered their hidden world. Some want to leave Emma to the foxes. Only the Thistle Fairy, the Dandelion Fairy, and the little Bluebell Fairy dare to help her.

Cornelia Funke's new children's book "Emma Doesn't Believe in Fairies" is an adventure journey into a world that lies right beside us and yet we so often overlook: in grasses, flowers, thorns, insects, small animals, and everything not made by humans. Emma learns to speak with plants and animals. But she also learns that this world is threatened - and that wonder is never harmless when responsibility grows from it.

At the Harbour Front Literature Festival, Cornelia Funke comes to Hamburg with her illustrator Elias Linnekuhl. Together they tell of fairies, foxes, and brambles, of nature and fantasy, of drawing, writing, and creating.