So how good is The Wishing Spell? Well ... it was certainly entertaining to read with my ten year-od daughter. Colfer has had fun playing with fairy tale characters like Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (of beanstalk fame), Cinderella, and Goldilocks, just to name a few, giving them a twist here and there to update and involve his young audience. His depiction of the Land of Stores is also intriguing, although I can't say that I completely buy or understand how it exists simultaneously with our boring old world.
What truly pulled my daughter in the most were his twin protagonists, Alex and Conner Bailey, who fall into a magical world and then have to go on a quest in order to have any hopes of ever getting back home again. There are echoes of The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, and the many other "modern" takes on fairy tales in pop culture that have been all the rage lately that may enchant you or not.
Colfer definitely has a love for his subject and his main characters. Where the book falters a bit is in the clumsy prose. My daughter kept pointing out how many "he saids" and "she saids" there were, as if the reader might forget who was speaking from one page to the next. Surely a kind and wise editor could have cleaned that up a bit, removing all the repetition. But all in all, the kid (and I) like how he told his story enough to give the second book a try, to see what happens next, which is what any author would wish for.
