The Wishing Spell

What's inside (7 sections)

1. A Fall Through Pages
2. A List Made of Old Stories
3. Queens With Schedules
4. The Woman in the Mirror Story
5. What Held and What Dragged for Me
6. Key takeaways
7. FAQ

A coworker saw me rereading fairy tales on my lunch break and said I had to try the actor from Glee who wrote a kids book. I laughed it off for a month. Then I found a beat up paperback at a library sale and brought it home for my niece. I read the first chapter to check if it was right for her age and kept going after she went to bed. The Wishing Spell was published in 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The first hardcover runs 448 pages. It opens The Land of Stories series, and it reads like someone who grew up loving the old stories and wanted to ask what happened after the last page.

The setup is simple and sad in a way that caught me off guard. Twins Alex and Conner Bailey are twelve. Their dad died in a car crash almost a year before the story starts. Their mom works long shifts and tries to hold the house together. Money is tight. Birthdays feel smaller than they used to. Alex is the student who does extra reading and worries about grades. Conner is the kid who falls asleep in class and makes jokes when he feels awkward. They share a room and a history but not much else right now. Grief has pushed them into separate corners.

For their birthday their grandmother gives them an old book of fairy tales called The Land of Stories. It looks expensive and fragile. Alex treats it like treasure. Conner treats it like homework. That split felt true to having siblings. One keeps everything. One loses everything.

Then the book starts humming.

A Fall Through Pages

Alex notices it first. She is alone with the book late at night. A warm buzz comes from the pages. Light moves across the paper. She leans in closer. A page seems to loosen under her hand.

Conner does not believe her at first, which is fair. He teases her about it at school and at home. When he finally sees it happen, he yelps. They hold onto the book together and tip forward into it. The fall is described as bright and loud and fast. They land hard on grass in a forest that smells wrong in a good way, pine and flowers and woodsmoke all mixed.

I liked how confused they are at first. They do not land with a plan. They argue about whether they hit their heads. Alex wants to study the plants. Conner wants to find a road. A large frog in a waistcoat walks up and talks to them, and Conner screams.

The frog calls himself Froggy. He lives in a small house in the Dwarf Forests and keeps books and maps. He tells them where they are. This is a place where Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood are not stories. They are queens with castles and taxes and guards and problems. They married, had kids, built governments. A group called the Happily Ever After Assembly tries to keep peace between kingdoms. There are also trolls and goblins in the forests, wolves that hunt in packs, witches who live past the edges of maps.

Alex is thrilled. Conner is hungry and wants to go home. Froggy tells them there might be a way. Years ago he found the journal of a man from the Charming Kingdom who fell in love with a woman from another world. That man wanted to cross between worlds to be with her. He chased an old piece of magic called the Wishing Spell. Froggy lends them the journal. The pages give clues to finding the pieces. That night the twins sleep on his floor and decide to try. They have no better option.

What I appreciated here is that Colfer does not make the crossing feel grand. It feels like falling into a lake. You come up sputtering. The twins miss their mom right away. They worry she will think they ran off. That worry stays with them through the whole trip and keeps the story grounded when the magic piles up.

A List Made of Old Stories

The Wishing Spell is not a wand wave. It is closer to a recipe. You gather eight things that each carry a lot of feeling and history, you lay them together, you add a fairy's tear, and you get one wish. The spell can only be used a set number of times, and by the time the twins arrive it is almost spent. That limit drives everything. If someone else uses it first, they are stuck.

Froggy explains the rough shape of it. The journal fills in the rest with riddles and notes and sketches. The twins need to collect the pieces in whatever order they can manage while staying ahead of whoever else is hunting them.

The eight pieces come from stories most readers will know. A lock of hair from Rapunzel's tower. One of Cinderella's glass slippers. A strip of bark from the basket Red Riding Hood carried to her grandmother. A tear from a fairy who feels real sorrow. The spindle from Sleeping Beauty's spinning wheel. A jewel from the glass coffin where Snow White once slept. The shared crown of the Troll King and the Goblin King. A dagger that belonged to the Little Mermaid, who in this world is remembered as the Sea Foam Spirit.

Reading that list gave me the same feeling as hearing a heist plan. Each piece sounds easy until you think about who owns it. You cannot walk up to a queen and ask for her wedding shoe. You cannot ask a grieving fairy to cry on command. The twins copy the list onto a scrap and argue about where to start. Alex wants to be careful and polite. Conner wants to grab the closest one and run. They settle on Rapunzel's tower because it sounds empty. The hair is there, caught in the stones and vines, and getting it teaches them how the journal works.

I should say the journal is my favorite device in the book. It is not a perfect guide. The man who wrote it was in love and in a hurry. Some entries are clear. Some are half finished. Some point to places that changed after he died. The twins misread it more than once. That felt honest. Old directions are often wrong.

Queens With Schedules

The middle of the book moves from kingdom to kingdom, and this is where Colfer has the most fun. Each ruler remembers her story differently than the twins do.

The Charming Kingdom comes first. It is ruled by Cinderella and her husband Chance, the eldest of four brothers all called Charming. The castle is busy because Cinderella is very pregnant. She is kind but tired. She gives the twins a tour herself. She shows them the ballroom and the stairs where she lost the slipper. She talks about palace life as work, not as a party. They leave without the slipper because asking felt rude. Later, when they unpack, they find one tucked in their bag.

Red Riding Hood's kingdom is louder. Red is young, rich, dramatic, and convinced she is the center of every story. She has her own castle and guards and portrait gallery. Jack, the boy from the beanstalk story, hangs around her court looking uncomfortable. He and Goldilocks have a secret connection that the twins stumble into. Goldilocks in this world is not a cute child. She is grown, fast with a sword, wanted by several kingdoms for theft and breaking and entering.

Getting the bark from Red's basket goes badly. The twins sneak where they should not. Fires start. In the mess they learn someone else is after the same pieces. A young woman moves quick through the smoke and takes what she needs.

The Fairy Kingdom slows things down. Fairies here are organized. They hold trials and keep records. The twins meet a young fairy named Trix who is in trouble for crying at the wrong time and place. The twins need one tear given freely from sorrow. They sit with Trix, hear why she is upset, speak up for her at a hearing, and she gives them what they need. You have to earn this piece by being decent.

The Sleeping Kingdom is quiet in another way. Sleeping Beauty, called Briar Rose by friends, rules a place that still feels sleepy. She lends them her spindle on the promise they will bring it back. She also warns them about the Evil Queen.

Snow White's castle brings a different ache. The twins expect to find her glass coffin there. It is gone. Snow White tells them she gave it to the dwarfs who once sheltered her. It sits in their mines now, deep underground. Getting there means a river crossing that almost goes wrong. Alex nearly drowns. Conner pulls her out and pretends he is not scared after. The dwarfs argue about whether to let kids touch the coffin. A jewel comes loose in the chaos.

The Troll and Goblin Territory is the scariest part for me. The twins are taken prisoner. The kings share one crown because neither trusts the other to hold it alone. The twins help a troll princess who is treated poorly, and in the escape Conner grabs the crown.

The last piece takes them to water. The Little Mermaid gave up her voice and then her life in the old story. Here she is called the Sea Foam Spirit. She tells them her dagger was thrown into a pit full of thorns called the Thornbush Pit after the journal writer failed to destroy it. The twins would not make it out without help. Froggy arrives at the right moment and drags them clear. He gets hurt doing it.

The Woman in the Mirror Story

All through the trip, the twins hear about the Evil Queen. She ruled after poisoning Snow White with an apple. She was locked up. She got out. No one knows what she wants. Froggy tells them to stay off main roads because her spies are out.

Her name in this book is Evly. She does not act like a cartoon villain. She is thin, tired, careful. She still has a stone heart she was allowed to keep in prison, a rock shaped like a heart that sits on a table. She talks to her Magic Mirror every day. Inside the mirror lives a man named Mira. He was trapped there years ago. She loves him. She wants the Wishing Spell for one reason. She wants him out.

She cannot do the walking herself, so she uses the Huntsman. He is old now. He once refused to kill Snow White and paid for that mercy for years. His daughter, who is young and strong and angry at the world, agrees to gather the pieces in his place. The Queen promises payment and protection. The Huntsman's daughter moves fast. She burns, steals, lies when she has to. She is not evil in a simple way. She loves her father and wants out of a life that gave her little.

The wolves help the Queen too. The Big Bad Wolf pack, led by a wolf called Malumclaw, agrees to trade help for a price. They want Red Riding Hood handed over. Red has mocked them for years. They are done with it. That deal puts everyone on a collision course at the Queen's castle.

When the twins finally reach the castle, they are caught. So are Goldilocks and Red. They sit tied to chairs while the Queen lays out two sets of pieces on a table. She has almost everything. So do the twins. She needs one last tear to light the spell. Alex cries hearing Evly tell her story about Mira, about prison, about wanting one normal day. Evly catches those tears and the spell wakes up.

This is the turn I did not expect when I first read it. The Queen gets her wish. Mira steps out of the mirror. For a page I thought the book would give her a happy ending. He is weak after so many years inside glass. He cannot breathe right. He dies in her arms. Evly screams and stops fighting. The wolves break in. Soldiers from the Northern Kingdom break in. Froggy and Jack fight their way through. It is chaos. The twins crawl free in the mess.

I found that sequence sadder than most middle grade books go. Colfer lets Evly be wrong about a lot and still lets her grief be real. Snow White listens to her story in a cell earlier and pities her without forgiving her. That balance is hard to pull off for younger readers. He pulls it off by keeping the language plain. She wanted her love back. She waited too long. Waiting broke her.

There is one more reveal after the battle that reframes the whole trip. The twins are invited to celebrate the birth of Cinderella's baby, a girl named Hope. The Fairy Godmother appears. She looks at Alex and Conner like she knows them. She is their grandmother. She has fairy blood, which means their mom does too, which means the twins do as well. That is why Alex's tears could wake the spell. It also explains why the book called to them. I guessed part of it early, but I still felt a small lift when it landed.

What Held and What Dragged for Me

The best parts are the character updates. Red Riding Hood as a self absorbed young queen who means well and messes up often made me laugh out loud. Goldilocks as a fugitive with a fast blade and a soft spot for Jack gave the book a pulse outside the hunt. Froggy won me over slowly. He starts as comic relief and ends as the person who takes a wound for kids he barely knows. Learning he is really Prince Charlie, the youngest Charming brother thought lost, hit me harder than the grandmother reveal.

The twins carry it well for a first book. Alex loves this world so much she keeps forgetting it can hurt her. Conner complains so much he misses how much he is learning. Their fights sound like real siblings. Alex reads ahead. Conner skims.

The quest shape is both a strength and a problem. Seeing eight familiar stories from new angles keeps pages turning. But by the fifth stop I could feel the pattern. Arrive, meet ruler, learn item location, trouble, escape. The Fairy Kingdom trial and the dwarf mines slowed me down. I skimmed a little in the mines.

The writing is plain in a way I mostly liked. Short sentences. Clear jokes. Sometimes the jokes pile up and undercut tension. A troll cell should feel scary longer than a paragraph. That keeps the tone safe for eight to twelve year olds, which is the right call for the audience, but it meant I rarely felt real danger even when the wolves circled.

A smaller gripe is how helpful adults are at just the right moment. Froggy appears when needed. Jack appears when needed. That is normal for fairy tales, and this is a book about fairy tales, so I can forgive a lot of it. Still, twice I thought the twins were saved a touch too easily.

None of that stopped me from finishing fast or from ordering the second book. The Evil Queen chapters give the story weight. The final image of Cinderella holding baby Hope while soldiers clean up broken glass stayed with me.

If you are picking this for a young reader, I would say ages eight and up, maybe younger as a read aloud if they can handle wolves and prison scenes. If you are an adult reading for yourself, go in knowing it is warm and quick rather than sharp. I read it to vet it for my niece and ended up thinking about my own brother on the drive home, about how we fought on trips and still sat together on the way back. That is more than I expected from a library sale paperback.

FAQ

When was The Wishing Spell published?

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers published it on July 17, 2012. The first hardcover runs 448 pages and the ISBN cited here is 9780316201575.

Is The Wishing Spell part of a series?

Yes. It is book one in The Land of Stories, followed by The Enchantress Returns. Starting here matters because later books build on Alex and Conner and the grandmother reveal.

Is The Wishing Spell only for kids?

It is written for ages eight to twelve, with wolves, prison scenes and grief handled gently. Adults who enjoy fairy tale twists often finish it fast, though the humor and rescue pattern feel aimed at younger readers.