53 pages • 1-hour read
The Wishing Spell
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Symbols & Motifs
The Wishing Spell Ingredients
The search for the ingredients of the Wishing Spell is the main conflict of the novel. Several ingredients are famous objects from a specific fairy tale: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, Rapunzel’s hair, Red Riding Hood’s basket, the Little Mermaid’s dagger, and Snow White’s coffin. The crown and tear are not from any specific fairy tale, but crowns and tears both play important roles in many fairy tales. Crowns represent happy endings, and tears symbolize the hopelessness felt by the protagonist before they can set off to find their happily-ever-after.
No explanation is given for why these exact items are required to cast the spell, but it may be that these items were somehow involved in wishes or other magic. Cinderella’s glass slippers and the Little Mermaid’s dagger came about because of wishes that were granted. The jewels of Snow White’s coffin and the spindle from Sleeping Beauty’s spinning wheel were associated with curses. Taken together, the Wishing Spell seems to require both objects of joy and hardship to grant a wish.
The Curvy Tree and Walking Fish
The curvy tree and walking fish are first presented as stories told by Alex and Conner’s dad to cheer up his children after rough days at school. Later, they become evidence that Alex and Conner’s dad was from the fairy-tale world. Taken together, they represent how not every story is well-known and that even obscure tales have meaning. The curvy tree was never chopped down because loggers determined it couldn’t be used, and the tree’s uniqueness saved it. Alex calls upon this lesson on her journey through the fairy-tale world.
The walking fish was once a regular fish who wished for legs so it could play with human children. When the fish’s friend fell into the lake, the fish couldn’t save him because it no longer had a tale. The fish’s story teaches us to be happy with what we have and who we are, something Conner learns over the course of the book. The twins encounter the walking fish in the Fairy Kingdom. One of the members of the Fairy Council adopted the fish because she felt sad about what happened, and the fish lives a comfortable life. Though the fish’s original story ended sadly, the aftermath of its story was happy, showing how stories can change.
The Land of Stories Book
The Land of Stories is both the title of the series in which The Wishing Spell is contained, as well as the name of the book Alex and Conner’s grandmother gives them. For members of the Fairy Godmother’s family, the book may act as a portal between the real world and the fairy-tale world. Alex’s fairy blood activates the portal at the beginning of the story, something she’s unaware of until the story’s end when she learns she’s part fairy and related to the Fairy Godmother.
The Land of Stories is a compilation of fairy tales written by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and others. When the Fairy Godmother realized fairy-tale stories were meaningful to children of the real world, she recruited storytellers to publish tales of the people from her land that resulted in happy endings. The Land of Stories represents the narrative our society chooses to elevate. The Evil Queen’s backstory in The Wishing Spell is just as emotional and trying as the tales of Snow White and others, but the queen’s story didn’t end happily and was therefore left out of the book. Rather, the queen became a villain in two worlds because her struggles were not resolved.
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