Return to Chris Colfer’s Land of Stories with Beyond the Kingdoms

In Chris Colfer’s Land of Stories series, fairy tales aren’t just retold, or even reimagined—they are exploded into new adventures! The fourth book of the series, Beyond the Kingdoms, has just been released, and fans of the series will be delighted to meet their old friends again, and follow them to even more unexpected places and stories. The humor and absurdity of many of the adventures have lots of kid appeal, and have made many readers into fervent fans of the series.
Twins Alex and Conner Bailey have come to the aid of fairy tale characters in the Land of Stories many times in the past, but they barely catch their breaths before they must stop a new villain, the Masked Man. But Alex keeps losing control of her magic, and the Fairy Council has decided that she herself is a threat, and won’t help.
Fortunately Alex and Connor have loyal friends who still trust them, so along with Goldilocks, Jack, Red Riding Hood, and Mother Goose and her gander, Lester, they set off to find the Masked Man. He turns out to be even more dangerous than they had thought. He has a magic portion that turns any book he wants into a portal, and he plans to bring an army of fictional villains out of their books and  into the Land of Stories to make himself its ruler!
The race is on through the Land of Oz, on into Neverland, and through Wonderland.  But when Alex meets young Arthur (and Mother Goose falls in love with Merlin), and Connor gets trapped with a most annoying Robin Hood, things look very doubtful indeed…
Beyond the Kingdoms can be read as a stand-alone, but it’s much more fun (and things make more sense) when you know all the characters beforehand—a lot of the pleasure in the books is seeing how the different stories of all the different fairy tale characters (and of some more ordinary folk) work out.

The first book of the series, The Wishing Spell, tells how Alex and Connor are given a magical book of fairytales by their grandmother. They find themselves falling through it into the Land of Stories, a place where fairy tale characters live, with no idea how to get home again. A mysterious journal gives them instructions—if they can find eight items belonging to different characters, they can complete the Wishing Spell. After many adventures and fantastical meetings with the heroes and heroines of their favorite tales, things are going well…but then they encounter the Evil Queen, who dashes their hopes, until the Fairy Godmother herself comes to their rescue.

The Enchantress Returns continues the adventures, when the evil Enchantress who cursed Sleeping Beauty kidnaps the twins’ mother. Alex and Connor must find their way back to the Land of Stories to save their mom, and the Land itself. To do so, they must make the Wand of Wonderment, which requires the 6 most important things of the 6 most hated characters. So Red Riding Hood organizes the construction of a flying ship, and the hunt is on!

When the third book, A Grimm Warning, begins, Alex is in the Land of Stories training to be the next Fairy Godmother, and Bo Peep is scheming to make herself Queen. In our world, Connor is on a school trip to Germany  to hear long lost stories of the Brothers Grimm, but what he hears is a warning. The Land of Stories in danger from the French Grande Armée from 200 years in the past! Connor and his classmate Bree, along with Mother Goose, must race across Europe to find the portal that the army plans to use to invade the Land. They are too late, though, and thousands of enemies pour through, swelling their ranks by releasing the inmates of Pinocchio Prison, including the mysterious Masked Man. Alex and Connor hurry to marshal the forces of the Land of Stories, but how can they defeat the Grand Armée’s new weapon—a dragon—without more magic than they have?
If you have kids who already love these books, here are some others that fracture fairytales in a similarly exciting way.

The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, of which The Fairy Tale Detectives is the first book, tells the adventures of two descendants of the Brothers Grimm who find that their destiny is to become detectives in a town filled with magical folk. This one is especially good for the most voracious of readers because there are nine books in the series (which makes having books to offer your kids so much easier!).

In A Tale Dark and Grimm, the first of a trilogy by Adam Gidwitz, Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into a mélange of other fairy tales, where many dangers await them. Warning—this one is somewhat dark and grim, but here’s humor and enchantment as well.

My own personal favorite is Into the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst.  Ages ago, the fairy-tale characters fled from their stories seeking refuge from the nightmarish forest of “The Wild.”  Rapunzel and her daughter Julie have been trying to keep the Wild under control (by keeping it under Julie’s bed), but when things go wrong and fairytale mayhem invades their Massachusetts town, Julie must venture into the Wild herself, with her step-brother, Puss-in-Boots!

 Is your young reader a fan of fractured fairy tales?