A Phaery Named Phredde is a series of comic Urban Fantasy novels written for children by Australian author Jackie French. The series focuses on ordinary middle school student Prudence, or Pru, and her fairy, er phaery best friend Phredde who would do anything rather than marry a handsome prince when she grows up. It all starts when Phredde arrives in Pru's ordinary country hometown as a refugee from Ruritania along with her parents Splendifera and Valiant (Jim). At the same time, Pru's house becomes a castle, she discovers that her brother is a werewolf and her new teacher turns out to be a vampire.
The series contains eight books:
- A Phaery Named Phredde and Other Stories to Eat With A Banana
- Phredde And A Frog Named Bruce.
- Phredde And The Temple of Gloom.
- Stories To Eat With A Blood Plum.
- Phredde And The Purple Pyramid.
- Phredde And the Vampire Footy Team.
- Phredde And The Leopard-Skin Librarian.
- Phredde And The Ghostly Underpants.
Tropes that apply to this series:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Phredde thinks her mother, who wants her to marry a Prince, is this to an extent.
- Ancient Egypt: Features in ''Phredde and the Purple Pyramid."
- Australia: The setting.
- Badass Normal: Pru. She has no magical powers until the last book but is skilled at coming up with useful non-magical solutions.
- Didn't Think This Through: Bruce decides to ping up Ms Richards, the librarian, when the group needs help. Unfortunately, they're millions of years in the past at the time, and he just used up the magic that could have been used to get them home.
- In the same book, Pru suggests that they just need to wait until Phredde and Bruce's parents give them their magic allowances, and then they can go home. Phredde and Bruce then point out that since they're in the past, their parents can't give them their magic, and they'd also have no way of knowing that their kids are missing and wouldn't know where to look for them anyway.
- Fantastic Racism: All over the place. In the eighth book, the solicitor Mr. Nahsti shows this against phaeries and vampires. In the first book Pru's great-uncle Ron implies that he has suffered this due to being a werewolf and thinks Pru's family might subscribe to it.
- Forced Transformation: Bruge is turned into a frog. Surprisingly, he likes it.
- Historical Domain Character: Pharoah Narmer (Menes) of Egypt, the first king of the First Dynasty, who united Upper and Lower Egypt, is a central character in "Purple Pyramid."
- Insistent Terminology: It's 'phaery', not 'fairy'.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Prince Narmer had over a hundred fifty siblings. Had. By the time of Phredde and the Purple Pyramid, he has two.
- Seen It All: Pru is incredibly blasé, even when she's facing new threats.
- Serious Business: Mrs Olson nearly has a breakdown at the thought of Pru having to get a tooth removed. Pru then realises that losing a tooth is probably a lot worse when you're a vampire.
- Space Whale Aesop: A rather good (and surprisingly valid) one from Prudence and the Tooth Phaery: "If anyone ever appears in your bedroom at two in the morning and claims to be the Tooth Phaery, take a very close look at his or her credentials."
