This charming tale was my favourite book as a kid. I don’t think there was anything else that really compared, except maybe Harry Potter (which has, for obvious reasons, had a fall from grace in recent years).
This series didn’t have the fandom culture that a lot of other children’s fantasy might have. And maybe it’s better that way. Revisiting the books now, around twenty years later as an adult, I’m still in love with the story and its world.
It’s not just the “magic” of it all, or the aesthetic, although it’s safe to say that these things, too, have held immense sway over my personality. My belief in the power of books and love of all that is whimsical and strange notwithstanding, one of the things that this book did very well was portray some of the darker sides of fantasy and the faerie world in general.
The faeries of Spiderwick’s world are not like Tinkerbell. They are mischievous, kind, scary, amoral, friendly, alien to human ways.