Ola Cohn's Fairies' Tree

First edition 1972, hardcover with dustjacket.

For just on three years Bendigo-born sculptor Ola Cohn spent long hours each day lovingly creating a community of fairies and animals in the iron-hard wood of a gnarled 500-year-old red gum tree which stands in Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens.

In May 1934 her task was completed. She dedicated the tree to the children of Melbourne with these simple words: 'I have carved a tree in the Fitzroy Gardens for you and the fairies; but mostly for the fairies, and those who believe in them, for they will understand how necessary it is to have a Fairy Sanctuary - a place that is sacred and safe as a home should be to all living creatures.'

Sonja Delander has told the story of Ola Cohn and her Fairies' Tree in a manner which will delight both young and old. Her text, with the photography of Rick Buckingham, brings to life all the characters which inhabit the tree. There is Stoutheart on his gallant bullfrog; the Energetic Emu who wants to lose weight; the Weeping Imp who scraped his knee while dancing and the Reading Mother, well protected from the weather in a niche in the tree, with the young fairies grouped around her knee intently listening to her story...."