Magical Adventures for Young Readers

Tuesdays at the Castle (Castle Glower series), by Jessica Day George
The magical, tricksterish Castle Glower changes its own architecture every Tuesday, removing rooms, sprouting new ones, and making itself altogether impossible to map. Or almost impossible: Princess Celie loves Tuesdays, and painstakingly records all the castle’s many changes. When intruders take the castle and report that Celie’s royal parents and eldest brother are dead, the castle does its best to make the intruders feel unwelcome—but it’s Celie and her remaining siblings who must save their home and their family’s crown. Young readers will thrill to the idea of living in this tricksy castle, and might start checking their own home for hidden doors.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap (Emily Windsnap series), by Liz Kessler
Plenty of kids dread gym class, but Emily Windsnap has a better excuse than most: as she discovers at the school pool (and manages to keep secret from her classmates), she’s half-mermaid, with legs that turn into a fishtail when submerged in water. As she ventures nightly off the houseboat she shares with her mother, to explore the mysteries of the ocean and befriend a full-blooded mermaid, Emily moves ever closer to learning the secret behind her father’s absence, and works to steer clear of the vindictive leader of the merworld. Kessler builds a thrilling undersea world that will pull readers quickly through the pages, longing to see what new adventures Emily will find beneath the waves.

The School for Good and Evil (School for Good and Evil series), by Soman Chainani
Every year, two children disappear from the tiny village of Gavaldon: one of them the sweetest, most well-behaved child, the other the biggest brat. It’s rumored that they’re taken to the School for Good and Evil, where they’re trained to be either fairy-tale good guys or baddies—and Gavaldon best friends Agatha and Sophie are about to discover the rumors are true. But after their kidnapping, beautiful blonde Sophie is shocked to be placed in the School for Evil, while grumpy, glowering Agatha is stuck against her will into the School for Good. Sophie’s increasingly unhinged efforts to switch schools only make her more suited to her school’s villainy, whereas Agatha discovers a goodness in herself that she didn’t see coming.

Fairest of All (Whatever After series), by Sara Mlynowski
In book one of this hilarious, irreverent series, siblings Abby and Jonah are “slurped” into a basement mirror in their new house and spat out into a world of fairy tales. Through an act of misplaced heroism—saving Snow White from eating the poisoned apple, inadvertently ensuring she won’t meet her prince—they derail the fairybook princess’s happy ending, and must sneak into a dangerous witch’s castle to get it back on track. Then, more importantly, they must find their way home. Readers will be impressed by Abby and Jonah’s sense of humor and bravery under (magical) fire, and wish they could join the clever siblings on their next storybook adventure.

Philippa Fisher’s Fairy Godsister, by Liz Kessler
With her best friend moving away and her embarrassingly enthusiastic parents showing no sign of chilling out, Philippa Fisher thinks her life can’t get any worse. But when her wish for a fairy godmother leaves her in possession of an irritable fairy godsister, she realizes she was wrong. Daisy, a misanthropic fairy forced into her very first fairy godsistering mission, is a cranky spitfire who’s no great fan of humans…and she’s only capable, it seems, of granting wishes that make things even worse. The story is told from the perspectives of both Philippa and Daisy, whose life-cycle is only as long as the flower she’s named for. This ticking clock lends urgency to Philippa’s attempts to find happiness via magic.

The Wolf Princess, by Cathryn Constable
Impoverished British boarding-school student Sophie catches the eye of a rich and mysterious visitor, who takes her, along with two companions, on a school-sponsored trip to Russia. But instead of helping recruit new students as planned, the girls find themselves trapped in an isolated cabin in the wilderness. When they’re rescued by a princess and brought to her palace, they believe their nightmare has ended. But their lives grow increasingly strange among the princess’s battered riches, in the heart of an icy and beautifully realized wintry world. When the orphaned Sophie finds that she has captured the mysterious princess’s eye, she starts to wonder whether she might be closer than ever to learning the truth about her own mysterious past. Readers with a taste for an exotic setting will love Constable’s frozen Russia, filled with howling wolves and glittering expanses.

Athena the Proud (Goddess Girls series), by Joan Holub & Suzanne Williams
This series reimagines Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, and Artemis, the younger generation of Greek mythology, as best friends and tweenaged students working on developing their goddessing skills at Mount Olympus Academy. Under the watchful eye of Principal Zeus, the divine girls have fun, develop crushes, and get in and out of mythological trouble all over Olympus. In the thirteenth installment, Athena the Proud, the girl we now know as the goddess of wisdom bites off more than she can chew in attempting a redesign of the minotaur’s labyrinth (know known as King Minos’s aMAZEment park) that gets wildly out of hand.

The Storybook of Legends (Ever After High series), by Shannon Hale
At Ever After High, the children of storybook legends are taught to follow in their parents’ footsteps, whether they lead them toward heroics or villainy. Their fates are cemented when they sign the Storybook of Legends, magically binding themselves to the stories of their ancestors. But Raven, daughter of an evil fairy-tale queen, doesn’t want to sign the book, preferring to make her own future rather than resign herself to being evil. Can she really fight fate when the price of not signing might be the end of her story and everyone in it? The cameo appearances of familiar characters, and clever touches like a “castleteria” that serves stone soup, will keep fairy-tale fans engaged, spying witty allusions and hoping their favorite princesses and villains might make an appearance.

The Wishing Spell (The Land of Stories series), by Chris Colfer
After receiving family heirloom The Land of Stories from their beloved grandmother, twin siblings Alex and Conner fall right through its pages and into a treacherous world of fairy tales, where they navigate hungry witches, snarling wolves, and not-so-happy classic characters (Snow White, Goldilocks) while on a quest to seek out the eight enchanted items that will send them back to their own world. Avid bookworms who wish they, too, could enter the world of their favorite reads will love every page—and fans of hit television show Glee will be psyched to read a series written by Colfer, also known as triple-threat talent Kurt Hummel.

Rapunzel Cuts Loose (Grimmtastic Girls series), by Joan Holub & Suzanne Williams
When Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Red Riding Hood meet at Grimm Academy, they become fast friends. And it’s a good thing, too, because the fairy-tale girls must band together against trials including mean-girl stepsisters, school-play stage fright, and the search for important magical charms. In Rapunzel Cuts Loose, fourth in the series, an accident gives Rapunzel’s fast-growing hair even more magical oomph, making it impossible to control. Good thing she’s got three besties to help set things straight.
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