The Wishing Spell

by Chris Colfer
438 pages
Reviewed by Sarah M.
Grade 4

 
“It had been more than five minutes since Alex had gotten home when The Land of Stories started acting up again. She ran up the stairs to her bedroom and promptly shut the door behind her. Alex took The Land of the Stories out of her school bag and placed it on her bedroom floor. She opened the cover and the room lit up from its golden glow. She smiled to herself. She had always hoped something magical would happen to her, and now something finally was. She pulled out a pencil from her school bag and placed it on top of the book and watched it disappear. Alex looked around the room for other disposable items she could drop in the book. She was out of pencils, and the books left on her bookshelf were the ones she wanted to keep. She looked down at her school bag; she did have plenty of school bags. She placed her whole bag on top of the book and watched it slowly sink into the storybook. Where were all these things going? Were they transported into another world?” (p. 78).

Alex and Conner Bailey received a book called The Land of Stories as a birthday present from their grandma. When they notice that it has a golden glow and birds can fly out of it, they know that there is something weird about it. Alex experiments with it by placing items on top of it, and they discover that the objects sink into the cover.

One day, they decide to hop into the book. They wind up in a fairytale village where they see all of the characters their dad told them stories about when they were little—even the scary ones! Right when they arrive, Snow White’s Evil stepmother, The Evil Queen, had escaped from the castle dungeons. Alex and Conner must compete with her to collect all the items of The Wishing Spell first or they might be stuck in the fairytale world forever!