In The Land of Stories

A review of Jodi Picoult's Between the Lines and Chris Colfer's The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell.

What if every book you read was real? If the characters within had lives of their own that carried on long after you turned the last page? These are the questions that Jodi Picoult with her daughter and co-author Samantha van Leer, and Chris Colfer asked themselves as they wrote their most recent/ debut novels.

Releasing a mere three weeks apart, Jodi and Samantha’s Between the Lines on June 26^th and Chris’s The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell on July 17^th, both authors tackle the idea of fairy tales invading the lives of children in our world in the most wonderful ways.

New Spins on Old Tales: Snow White

I love fairytale retellings. There's just something about them that makes me search for and read them enthusiastically. Ella Enchanted, Beastly, Spindle's End… AKA Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty… name a fairytale and there's probably a cool retelling of it.

This year, those retellings have gone from text to screen. ABC's Once Upon A Time, with its ensemble of fairytale characters, has become a smash hit and Grimm, a fairytale cop drama, also continues to thrive. The popularity of fairytale retellings isn't limited to TV though. Two retellings of Snow White recently duked it out on the big screen. Mirror, Mirror was a whimsical, family-friendly take on the tale while Snow White and the Huntsman was an action-adventure version.