On her birthday Fuchsia receives a great surprise--a pretty new hat with a magic fairy inside! The fairy tells Fuchsia to close her eyes and make a special wish . . . and before Fuchsia knows it, she has three cute new friends to play with--Pigoh, Fwoggy, and Meowse! The friends play all day until it is time for bed. As she drifts off to sleep, Fuchsia knows her friends will return the next day. All she has to do is say the magic words, "THE FUCHSIA IS NOW!"

"Blaring pink, pumpkin orange, lime green and robin's-egg blue form wild combinations in Seibold's (Olive, My Love) quirky new volume, whose rounded corners and heavy paper suggest an oversize board book. Fuchsia, a doll-like girl the vibrant color of her name, receives a pink hat for her fifth birthday. In the smooth close-ups, Fuchsia — with her curved limbs, long-lashed oval eyes, no nose and a half-circle smile — resembles a happy baby bottle capped by a rubber nipple. 'One day Fuchsia decides to make her hat fancy,' so she picks a flower from the fuchsia tree. ' 'What a lovely tree, and it is named after me!' she thinks aloud.' A fairy emerges, feet first, from the bell-shaped flower, and reveals some odd magic words: 'The fuchsia is now.' The heroine says the phrase and wishes for playmates. Soon she has three unusual friends, including a talking pig (aptly named Pigoh), frog (Fwoggy) and mouse (Meowse), with a tail like a lariat. These characters don't do much; instead, they seem like a set of plastic toy figurines, immobilized on the pages and set in motion only by readers' imaginations. Yet Seibold's deliberately basic storytelling in a childlike voice, as though made up on the spot — implies their instant friendship, and the jolting secondary-color scheme and abstract digital art lend a hallucinatory twist. Seibold conjures an air of dreamy free-association and sweetly proposes that the dangling pistils of certain flowers are, in fact, fairy feet. Ages 3-6." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The bestselling author of "Olive, the Other Reindeer" is back with a brand-new picture book starring a sweet and adorable new heroine, Fuchsia, who receives a pretty new hat with a fairy inside.