The Land of Stories

Author: Chris Colfer
Illustrator: Brandon Dorman

© Date: 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages: 438
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Not really, small illustrations are included at the start of each chapter
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No

Summary from Book: Alex and Conner Bailey’s world is about to change.

When the twins’ grandmother gives them a treasured fairy-tale book, they have no idea they’re about to enter a land beyond all imagining: The Land of Stories, where fairy tales are real.

But as Alex and Conner soon discover, the stories that they know so well haven’t ended in this magical land—Goldilocks is now a wanted fugitive, Red Riding Hood has her own kingdom, and Queen Cinderella is about to become a mother!

The twins know they must get back home somehow. But with the legendary Evil Queen hot on their trail, will they ever find the way?

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell brings readers on a thrilling quest filled with magic spells, laugh-out-loud humor, and page-turning adventure.

Page Pig Thoughts: I can see how this one could be someone’s happy story place, but it wasn’t really mine. There were moments when something happened that I appreciated, but they were a bit fleeting. The story never really got me excited and pulled into it. I found myself consistently checking what page I was on and how many more pages that I had to read until I finished. This one was heavy on romance and fairy tales, but not necessarily the happily ever after version of them.

The end of the story didn’t feel overly organic. After very few hints being offered for some big questions like how the twins’ family fit into the fairy tale world, the end basically just has a big narration bit to explain it all out. Also, the role of fairy tales in the lives of children with rough childhoods felt kinda odd and I wasn’t quite sure what message was being sent.

This story does seem to lay a foundation for stories to come. I would imagine the writing style improves as more books are written, a first novel would be hard to write. While this one was decent, I don’t anticipate Page Pup having an interest in this story type, and I don’t intend to read another any time soon.

Use caution with younger or sensitive readers, the fairy tale versions may not follow the storyline of a favorite movie and may be a bit heavy. The fighting, romance, and sorrow after parental loss may also be tricky.

Family Unit: Alex and Connor (12 years old) live with their mother after their father died suddenly.

Conflict/Social Issues:

The twins struggle through life after their father dies.
Alex was kinda happy to be experiencing the fairy tales that she loved throughout her life, but Conner is just desperate to get back home.
Red Riding Hood loves Jack. Jack loves Goldilocks.
The wolves want revenge on Red Riding Hood.

Positive Items:

Conner and Alex are resilient and able to use some creative solutions to travel throughout the fairy tale world without getting eaten or enslaved.
The twins are able to have more empathy for some of the fairy tale characters, even the villains.
The twins are able to go back home knowing that their mother was not panicking about them and searching for her lost children.

Items of Interest:

Alex and Conner’s father dies suddenly in a car crash a few days before their eleventh birthday. Their mother has to work lots of hours to try to make ends meet, so the twins feel like they lost both parents. The home that they had lived in gets foreclosed while they live in shabby rental home. Their mother has overdue bills piling up. When their grandmother makes a surprise visit, she stashes the bills in her purse.
Conner struggles as a student and keeps falling asleep in class. Alex is the model student. Their teacher says that she is trying to be understanding of their home situation but Conner should try to be more like his sister that seems to manage just fine.
Conner gets tired of everyone trying to eat them.
Alex climbs to the top of Rapunzel’s tower without safety lines. I wasn’t sure how she pulled that off and a fairy tale prince could not. She pulls herself into the room to find Conner sitting reading the journal because he had climbed the stairs and reached the top faster.
Romance – Queen Red Riding Hood has a super crush on Jack (of the beanstalk fame). She has him over to the palace every week to propose. She puts on way too much makeup and dresses up way too fancy for the early time of day that they meet. She gets annoyed when there are other guests other than just Jack. She then puts a chair for Jack right next to her throne and chairs for the twins across the room. She proceeds to rest a hand on him as she contorts herself in her throne to be closer to him. She heavily suggests that he should propose to her and she would say yes.
Romance – Jack loves Goldilocks who is a fugitive and not allowed into any kingdoms. In the middle of the night, they secretly meet at the kingdom wall. They declare their love for each other. Jack desperately wants to go with Goldilocks this time, but she says that it would never work. She says that if a flame and a snowflake fall in love, they cannot be together without one harming the other. They passionately kiss through the bars of the wall. Connor is thankful that a wall separates them. After a brief interaction, Goldilocks is off into the night and Jack slumps off back home.
Romance – Princess Trollbella has a serious crush on Conner after just seeing him being carried by to be put in prison and become a slave. In the middle of the night, she walks up to the prison wall and tells Conner that if he kisses her, she will free him. Conner really wants no part of it, but Alex insists that he should take one for the team. Conner slowly walks toward the bars, then Alex shoves him into Trollbella who plants a super juicy one on him.
Alex manages to trap Trollbella into the prison cell that they were in, but sees all of the other people that have been slaves for a long time. She releases them all and they proceed to escape.
Language – crappy/crap, harlot, prissy
Conner stands up to the fairy court to make an appeal that nobody is perfect, everyone makes mistakes every now and then.
The Evil Queen threatens to turn the wolves into rugs if they do not retrieve the twins for her.
Conner jumps into a cold lake and tells Alex that “I think we are twin sisters now.”
Fairy tale note – Original versions of fairy tales are mentioned, but some parts are still held off a bit. The Little Mermaid is now a sea foam spirit. She tells about her deal with the Sea Witch to get legs to go after the human that she loved. When he fell in love with someone else, her sisters gave up their hair for a dagger from the Sea Witch. The Little Mermaid was supposed to kill the prince so she could return to the sea. She could not go through with it and became what she is today, the Sea Foam Spirit.
When Jack goes down to a prison to free Goldilocks (she was in more than one prison at the end of the book), the Huntsman starts firing arrows from his crossbow that bounced off of the prison stones. Jack tried blocking arrows with his sword. One arrow gets deflected back toward the Huntsman, bounces off the stone wall, pierces the Huntsman from the back, and kills the Huntsman. The Huntsman’s daughter, the Huntress, is angered that Jack kills her father. She stabs his arm from behind with her dagger, but before she can land the fatal strike, Goldilocks just finished picking her cell lock and takes her on. Goldilocks and the Huntress start an epic duel. They wind up on the roof of the castle battling it out. Jack sees the Huntress about to strike Goldilocks, so he aims a cannon and fires it at the Huntress. She fell the entire height of the castle into the moat and could not have survived the fall. Goldilocks smiles down at Jack, then the roof collapses. Jack manages to find Golilocks in the rubble. They “share a kiss so passionate that a few of the soldiers blushed. It was love personified.”
Romance – Turns out that Goldilocks was on the run because of a letter that Red Riding Hood had sent to her when they were children. Red made the letter appear that Jack had written it. Goldilocks followed the letter instructions to meet Jack at the bears’ house, which is how Goldilocks broke her first law, breaking and entering. Red thought the letter would get Goldilocks out of the way so that she could have Jack’s affections, but Jack continued loving Goldilocks. When Goldilocks heard who wrote the letter, she kidnapped Red and drug her out to throw her into a cursed thornbriar pit. The wolves then kidnapped them both. Events happened… Then Red writes a letter of apology to Goldilocks and busts Goldilocks out of jail. Red leads Goldilocks to Jack. Goldilocks says that Jack should not go with her because he will be a fugitive too. Jack says that life is not worth living if he doesn’t get to be with her. Red cries at her pain of losing her love (Jack), Froggy consoles her and tells her that she was very brave. She asks if her pain will ever go away. Froggy says that traces of the feeling may stay for the rest of her life, but it should get better over time.
Romance – The Evil Queen, Evly, loved a man, Mira, when they were younger. The Enchantress wanted to train Evly, so the Enchantress trapped Mira in a mirror so that Evly would no longer be distracted. Evly learned all about potions so that she would get rid of the Enchantress. Once the Enchantress was gone, Evly focused her efforts on freeing Mira from the mirror. No one could help free him. The pain was too much for Evly, so she had her heart removed. She would then carry the stone heart near her always. Evly had a mission to collect all of the items for the wishing spell so that she could free Mira. The wolves brought Conner and Alex and their bag of wishing spell items to her. Evly then put the wishing spell into motion to free Mira. He fell out of the mirror, but he had been trapped for too long and didn’t really remember who he was. He had reflected images of others for so long that his face had even lost distinguishing features. Evly grabbed her stone heart (so she could feel emotions again) and held the weak Mira in her arms. Upon hearing his name, he smiled, said “Evly,” then died. Evly cried over his body and refused to let go even when the castle was being fired upon and about to collapse. Alex told Evly to let go of her heart so the pain would go away. Evly continued to cry. Then the mirror fell over Evly’s and Mira’s bodies and they were gone.
Conner asks King Charming why he was so interested in a dead lady (Snow White). No answer was given.
Upon learning that Evly and Mira were gone, Snow White says, “I think the best thing we can do now to honor her memory is to live every day with the compassion and understanding no one ever gave her.” Alex says, “villains are mostly just people villainized by circumstance.”
Turns out that Froggy was the long lost Charming brother, the Fairy Godmother turned him back into his human form.
Turns out that Alex and Conner’s grandmother is Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Their father grew up in the fairy tale kingdoms. Grandma accidentally traveled to the earth dimension when she was traveling around in her younger years. She was fascinated by the world ad talked with children who didn’t know anything about magic or fairies. “Their world was so consumed with war and famine and disease…they would sit for hours and listen to stories of the fairytale world.” Grandma discovered that the stories inspired them, gave them hope, courage, and strength. They learned lessons from them. Children without families learned to love and trust. Children who were ill got a sparkle back in their eyes. Grandma was the only one who has the gift to travel between worlds, but she took Mother Goose and a few fairies into the twins’ world to spread stories of the fairytale world.
The twins’ father had traveled worlds once and feel in love with a woman. He discovered the wishing spell and wrote a journal about it. He was able to travel worlds and be with the woman that he loved, they later had the twins. Grandma and their father intended to show them the fairytale world when they were older, but their father died before he could take them. As it turned out, his journal helped them find their way around though.
When the twins were born, the time difference between the two worlds dissipated. Since the twins are children of both worlds, they are the bridge taht connects them.
Grandma takes the twins home, Grandma tells Alex that someday they may go back to the fairytale world.

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

Book 2 – The Enchantress Returns
Book 3 – A Grimm Warning
Book 4 – Beyond the Kingdoms
Book 5 – An Author’s Odyssey
Book 6 – Worlds Collide