Parent reviews for The Wishing Spell: The Land of Stories, Book 1

The one-dimensional characters were really off-putting for me. The two main characters are boy-girl twins. The boy is unintelligent, but very popular! The girl is very intelligent, but so unpopular at school that when presented with the option of never returning to her home and family, she strongly considers the option. Because the characters are so one-dimensional, and because there are no other characters for a young reader to relate to, I felt uncomfortable with the take-aways. Boys are dumb. Girls are smart. Dumb kids have friends. Smart kids don't have friends.

The best book ever. Beginning is a little slow but get so much better

Makes me wonder how this got to be a '#1 NYT Bestseller' - the language is clumsy; especially the similes, metaphors etc. Character behaviour is consistently lacking in logic & relatability.

The book is descriptive, and can create a mental image in your mind. It can remind you of happy things, bring certain emotions. My daughter, absolutely is in love with it, seeing as she heard a lot of good things about it, and it was on one of her favourite tv shows (Julie's Greenroom), so I decided she could get the books. And this has educational value, and great messages, great role models, and just a little bit of sex and violence.

The storyline is clever and enjoyable. Goldilocks is the best character--she's strong and independent and more complex than most of the other characters, including the protagonists. I agree with other reviewers who feel Alex and Conner are a bit one dimensional. And it is a shame that the book seems to reinforce the idea that smart kids can't make friends and that popular kids aren't book smart. My biggest gripe is that it's not very well written--words and phrases are repeated instead of coming up with new ways to say things (often within the same page). It's a little too simplistic. Even my daughter (11), when we were reading it together, noticed that the writing wasn't very good. But it is a fun twist on fairytales--I loved the Evil Queen's and Goldilock's backstories.

The book has an interesting and different take to the stories behind the fairy tales that we know. It has potential but is lacking in the writing. The language use is simple and basic. I keep thinking back to narrative stories that I was made to write in school. Character development is rather flat too. The first of this flaw that stood out to me was Alex's perpetual nudging and exclamation at things that Conner did or said.

I think all the series are the BEST BOOKS I EVER READ, really like I start to read the books for my BOOK CLUB but I totallly fell in love with this book and all the series. I do recommend to read this book and the following ones. Even if in this book don´t end like you expected I really need to tell you that CONTINUE READING IS GOING TO GET BETTER AND BETTER!!!

As an educator, I would not recommend this book as an example of quality writing. The plot is a good idea, yet the lack of quality vocabulary, dialogue, and sentence structure hinder the advancement of the plot. Many events are unrealistic even for a fairy tale (I.e. Red Riding hood being dragged behind a horse, yet unharmed because her dress was big and then describing her as "extremely aggravated" about the situation) and opportunities for character and story development are wasted with simple words and over explanation of character thoughts/emotions and descriptions. The reader is never given an opportunity to make connections, inferences, fill in the gaps regarding character motives, or imagine introspective dialogue within a character. It is a shame because this is a fun take on the classic fairy tales.

I think this is the best book ever. When I got it I thought it would be babyish, but now I have read every book in the series, investigated all I can about it, and know the storyline by heart.

I loved both books so far and am reading simultaneously with my son who is 12 (he has just finished book 6; so has finished them all) and was very sad to have done so. He wants to readthem again. Very good read! Id compare them to « Harry Potter » or « Narnia » in the sense that they speak to many people, are fun to read, you cant wait to start the next novel and have magic and fantasy/fairytale themes.