The Land of Stories – The Enchantress Returns

Chris Colfer's The Land of Stories - The Enchantress Returns is a fairy-tale adventure for 9 year olds that starts with Sleeping Beauty's worst nightmare coming back.

What happens

Her kingdom has just finished celebrating. After years of struggle it has finally recovered from the hundred-year sleep, and the queen goes to bed for the first time in over a decade.

A few hours later she's woken in a panic. A spinning wheel has appeared out of thin air and burst into flames, and the thornbushes are growing back over the castle. She's bundled into a carriage and chased through the forest by something nobody can see. Then every tree around her turns into a spinning wheel.

Then we're back with Alex Bailey, now thirteen, nodding off on the train home from an extra class in the next town. It's been more than a year since she last saw her grandmother. No letters, no calls, not even a birthday visit.

Alex has been to the Land of Stories and she can't stop thinking about getting back. She's started hugging a fairy-tale treasury in the school library and whispering to it (yes, people notice).

At home there's a bigger shock. Conner is waiting in the kitchen with a dozen red roses and a heart-shaped card. They're for Mum, from Dr Bob, and Buster the dog was a bribe all along! It's very funny and very sad at the same time.

Mum's talk with them about their dad is probably the bit that stays with your reader. She explains why she's ready to be happy again. Conner asks a question he's sure is childish, about heaven getting a bit awkward. What would you say to that?

From there, the Enchantress carries off their mother, and the twins have to find a way back in by themselves to save her.

It's worth knowing that this is a sequel, and the opening chapters give away how the first adventure turned out. So start with The Wishing Spell if your reader hasn't met the twins yet.

The prologue is properly scary too. Soldiers and horses are flung into the trees one by one and villagers are caught by the vines, all through the queen's carriage window. A child who's fine with a fairy-tale villain who means business will be gripped.

What to read next

If it's the Sleeping Beauty side that grabs them, The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale is a gentler way in. Lana drops through a trapdoor in a brand-new supermarket called Grimm's and lands in Briar Rose's palace, where the thirteenth fairy is waiting.