'Don't try to be something you really are not. Your one true self is the best thing you've got.' So we learn in this short book with rhyming couplets and lots and lots of black and white marvelous pictures and integrated text. Aada has become seriously unhappy because she has had a very bad year. Her gran died, and her dad lost his job, and they have had to move to a different town where she must start a new school. She knows she is 'different' and accepts that, but depends on her one and only friend, the Truth Pixie. This friend is a mixed blessing because she can only tell the truth, and at the new school no one likes Aada because they don't like the Pixie's truth-telling, which is often quite rude. A particular bully called Leena is very nasty indeed and makes Aada's life a misery. Aada begins to tell lies in order to make friends and tells the other kids that she isn't friends with the Truth Fairy, which makes the TF feel very bad too and to run away back to her old home in the north. While there, she meets different elves and fairies and discovers that no one wants to know the truth about themselves. When Aada realises what a mistake she has made in chasing away her best friend, she is heartbroken, and when dad suggests she write a letter to the TF, she does (Father Christmas comes into the story too) and soon the TF is on the back of a reindeer being taken back to Aada. Aada learns to stand up for her friend and to celebrate telling the truth as well as being herself. One never quite knows whether the Truth Fairy is actually Aada herself, and her rudeness to others has been the problem all along, or whether there really is a separate TF. Never mind, it's a great read and will be enjoyed by lots of children who feel 'different' and are sometimes bullied by others.