Cork mum’s business inspired by children taking part in her classes
Cork entrepreneur Stef McSherry has just launched Irish Fairy Tails.
With more than 20 years of experience working with children, Stef McSherry was inspired to create her newest product by the kids who take part in her classes.
“They just love dressing up and pretending they’re somebody else, or going off on an adventure, and that made me go, ‘I’d love to do something like that,’” says the Cork-based founder of Kinderama, which runs multi-activity classes in schools and childcare settings.
McSherry has just launched Irish Fairy Tails, storybooks for children that encourage imagination, play, and come with a matching costume tail. There are two stories, - about a shy dragon who learns that his fire can be a force for good, and - about a curious mermaid who discovers the power of asking for help.
“There’s a mermaid story and a dragon story, but they mirror each other,” explains McSherry. “It’s a shy dragon that’s scared about his fire, so he hides away in a cage, and then a mermaid gets stuck in some nets, and she needs some help.” The mermaid looks to the fire-breathing dragon for help, but he’s afraid he will hurt her.
Each book comes with a wearable tail to help bring the story to life for children.
McSherry got the idea for these costumes from the kids she teaches through her Kinderama classes. “
“There’s bits of sport… it’s all kinds of imagination, so that they are just having loads of fun,” she says. “There are loads of costumes in it, and that’s where the idea for the mermaids and dragons came from.”
It was important to McSherry that the costumes were high quality, durable, and safe. “I wanted [the fabric] to be inherently flame-retardant, rather than covering fabric in flame-retardant stuff. So we ended up using wipe-clean leather. That’s what makes the costume so soft and shimmery, but it also means mums don’t have to wash them,” she says.
As well as promoting imaginative play, the books convey messages of encouragement to young children.
“For the mermaid one, she’s scared to ask for help. She doesn’t want to ask for help. But you know that if you do put your hand up and ask for help, you might even make a friend,” she says. “That’s tied back again to Kinderama, and we’re always trying to give little messages of confidence, that if you’re shy, you can still join in.”
On every page, there is one word written in Irish and also spelled phonetically. This was important to McSherry, who grew up in Wiltshire in the UK, and now lives in Cork with her husband and two children.
“My kids are Irish, and although they speak Irish really well… I didn’t know how to read the words. It’s not like you can sound them out the way you learn English,” she says. “So there’s the Irish spelling, and then it’s written out phonetically, so that if there’s lots of non-Irish speakers now raising kids that are speaking Irish, they can read the word properly too.”
The books have officially gone on sale.
The stories are ideal for any children who enjoy dress-up and imaginative play, says the author.
“I know sometimes parents find the imaginative play quite difficult, whereas now with this, you can read the story, and then you’ve got your costume to put on, and then you can say, ‘Right, now, you be the dragon and I’ll be the mermaid’... it’s like an invitation to play.”
As well as the Irish Fairy Tails website, stockists include Pinocchio’s toy shop in Cork city and Sensational Kids, a multi-disciplinary children’s therapy enterprise with centres in Kildare, Mayo, Monaghan and Clonakilty in West Cork. “We’re being stocked in their shop, which directly feeds their charity,” she says. “They loved the fact these costumes, kids can wear them outside of their clothes. So if you’ve got any kind of sensory issues, it’s not like you’re putting on scratchy fabric or anything like that.”
McSherry spent two years developing these products, with the support of the ACORNS programme for female entrepreneurs and the Local Enterprise Office. “I really thought, naively probably… Oh yeah, this should take a couple of months,” she admits. “I thought ‘this will be easy, I’ll find somebody to make them, and off we go’. And no, it’s taken two years. I’m really pleased with the way they are now. They look fantastic.”
She hopes to continue growing her new venture in 2026. “I do have more stories, so maybe towards the end of next year I’d love to add to the range, like that’s where I love to go with my creative head.”
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