Wednesday, February 1, 2017

The Land of Stories Book 1 The Wishing Spell, Chris Colfer



SUCH a fun series! My older daughter started reading them when she got the first 4 for Christmas 2015. I was looking for another audio to listen to with my 5 year old while we're in the car and this one was available. We both love it! Chris Colfer does the narration for the audios and I just LOVE his voices too. The only one I don't feel is super consistent is Jack, sometimes he sounds too feminine. But everyone else is spot on.

Connor and Alex are twins who are around 11 years old, if I'm remembering right, and their father was recently killed in a car accident. Their mom is trying to get by as a single parent. Alex is bookish and not very well off socially at school. Connor has it going on socially, but occasionally falls asleep in class and does the minimal work to get by. Though they are polar opposites in most ways, they love each other fiercely. Their paternal grandma gives them the story book that she and their dad read to them as young children: The Land of Stories.

While in possession of said book, Alex finds that it randomly hums and she can drop things into the book and they just disappear. One day she decides to see where everything is going....and Connor figures this out just in time to try to stop her, only to end up going with her. They fall into the Land of Stories and find that the fairy tale world is an actual world in another dimension. They find out the only way to get back home is to use a collecting spell called the wishing spell. They know it was used successfully once and is allowed to be used one last time. What happens next is an epic journey throughout all your favorite fairy tale stories and characters-but they are often not what you thought they were! Their stories are a bit different from how they were told here, and you learn that everyone has an untold story. Even the villains.  And I really liked that part. It helps, I think for kids to hear that people who make bad choices may also have been the victim of other bad choices. It helps to learn how to ask for and seek other people's stories instead of judging them.

4.5 stars. Not quite as beloved as Harry Potter, but then I think you almost need the entire series to rate the series as a whole instead of just individually.

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