The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

The Wishing Spell transports a twin brother and sister into the land of fairy tales. The Tenth Kingdom did a very similar storyline 16 years ago. If you want to visit fairy-tale land, just watch that mini series.

It's clear the author of the Wishing Spell, Chris Colfer loves fairy tales. His excitement is obvious, but his writing is incredibly sloppy. The prologue begins with Snow White demanding to know if her evil step mother ever loved her. Why should she answer her? She's evil. Let her stay evil....

Next the story jumps to children in a classroom talking about and writing papers about fairy tales. First of all, the children are 12. I don't think 12 year olds are writing 7 page papers with that sort of advanced language in it. The girl is a goody two shoes, the boy is lazy and blunt. Then they go to the land of fairy tales. Suddenly the girl is an adventure seeker and the boy is a bumbling idiot. Then, nearly every chapter (felt like every page almost) there was another fairy tale character mentioned. It was too much.

In short.... If you love fairy tales, and the new trend of all the fairy tales being in one place, you might enjoy this book. If you like better written fairy tales, or retellings, there are many better options out there. This story just felt like it dragged, and there was nothing really innovative about it.