Parents' Guide to An Author's Odyssey: The Land of Stories, Book 5

Violence & Scariness

"Off with their heads!" is a recurring theme. As the story begins, a villain is about to execute all the royal families of the fairy tale world, including the babies. Later, the main villain plans to kill his own son and drain his blood to gain magical power. An evil character has murdered his daughter for doing a kind deed. Battles with assorted adversaries -- pirates, monsters, and the like -- involve both weapons and magic; villainous characters attack one another with murderous intent, and many appear to meet a violent death at the hands of other characters, although several of them revive. A scene features long-dead women (including once-beheaded Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette, with their heads stitched back on) who emerge from their graves every night to chat. A monster turns living beings to stone -- including many friends of beloved characters. Pirates have assorted missing limbs, which is treated as comical.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drunken Mother Goose returns, along with other hard-drinking characters new and old; some of the pirates run amok making and consuming strawberry daiquiris. A character injects a villain with a sedative. Another poisons a rival with magic, personality changing dust.

Products & Purchases

Many references to events and characters in previous volumes, usually for context. There's also a sample chapter of A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tales, the latest in a series of spin-offs from Colfer's lucrative fairy tale franchise.

Language

Occasional "damn!" and brief references to buttocks and pee, toilet humor, and a scene where pirates are warded off by a flock of pooping birds; a bit of innuendo around "stones," and this from a character to Captain Hook: "From the way you obsessively talk about him, I'd say he's taken much more from you than just your hand!"

Sex, Romance & Nudity

There are many couples among the adult characters; the woman in one is very pregnant for most of the story but manages to have adventures anyway. There's a brief, cartoonish childbirth scene. Some kissing and romantic tension, but pretty innocent. One comic character has been romantically obsessed with Conner -- who doesn't share her feelings -- from early in the series, and briefly transfers her interest to Peter Pan, who's not interested. Alex and young King Arthur, in different worlds, pine for each other.

Positive Messages

Many heartfelt, sometimes preachy, messages about the importance and proper roles of teachers and storytellers, reflecting Colfer's frequent statements about how those forces saved him during a troubled childhood. For example: "As teachers, we must not guide our students to become the people we wish them to be, but elevate them to become the people they were meant to be. Remember, the encouragement we give our students may be the only encouragement they ever receive, so don't use it sparingly." As in the previous series installments, family, friendship, courage, and creative thinking are core values. So are teamwork and an appreciation for unique talents.

Here as elsewhere, Colfer, who advocates for storytelling's quasi-religious role of giving people something (however ultimately ridiculous) to believe in, serves up a lot of religion-mocking humor, such as a pirate ship called Dolly Llama and an animal sidekick called the Rosary Chicken.

Positive Role Models

Conner and Alex are loving siblings -- and several plot developments here have them recognizing places where they might have fallen short in the past and owning up to it. Their newly discovered German cousin from A Grimm Warning shows much bravery and kindness in scary circumstances. Their mom ("Nurse Charlotte") and stepdad ("Doctor Bob") are quite often bewildered by all the magical goings-on caused by kids with roots in the fairy tale world -- especially when a pirate ship suddenly appears in their swimming pool -- but rise to the occasion beautifully, whether it calls for fooling hospital administrators or saving a kid from his would-be murderer.

Educational Value

As part of the loony hodgepodge of historical references (for example, the Rat Pack of Vegas fame) and plot elements, many books are mentioned, from classic fairy tales to Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Amid the bits of trivia, geography, and so on is the occasional bit of actual disinformation, as when Alex (who's pretty much right about everything) asserts that the prefix "poly," which means "many," means "seven."