The Wishing Spell

Tilly Pages discovers that characters can step out of books and that she can travel into their stories. The Bookwanderers shares Alex and Conner's delight in meeting familiar literary figures while learning that a beloved plot looks different from the inside. Anna James sets much of the adventure around a family bookshop and a mystery about Tilly's mother. It is gentler and more book-centered than Colfer's rapid fairy-tale quest. Choose it if the doorway through a physical book was the detail you wanted to follow into another series.

Meggie learns that her father can read characters out of books, a gift that also brings danger into their home. Inkheart shares The Land of Stories' idea that a story can cross the boundary into ordinary life and change a family's fate. Cornelia Funke's novel is darker and longer, with a villain who makes the magic feel costly. Its focus is on the power of reading and the risk of calling something out, rather than on children touring fairy-tale kingdoms. Start here for another family adventure where a book is an active, unpredictable object.

Sabrina and Daphne Grimm discover that fairy-tale characters live in a modern town and that their own family has a role in keeping the peace. The Fairy-Tale Detectives, the first Sisters Grimm book, shares Colfer's pleasure in recognizable characters behaving beyond their original stories. Michael Buckley shapes the opening as a mystery, with the sisters investigating an immediate problem instead of traveling through a separate kingdom. It is a close fit when Alex and Conner's sibling partnership and the clever reuse of folklore were the main attraction.

Sophie and Agatha are carried into a school that trains fairy-tale heroes and villains, then find that their assigned roles challenge everything they thought they knew. The School for Good and Evil shares The Land of Stories' remix of familiar fairy-tale logic and its interest in what happens after a story's labels are applied to real people. Soman Chainani is darker and more satirical, with friendship under greater pressure than Alex and Conner's sibling bond. Choose it if the retellings mattered more than the portal journey.

Luna is raised by a witch after being accidentally fed moonlight, and her growing power draws several lives together. The Girl Who Drank the Moon does not carry children through a storybook, but it shares The Land of Stories' affection for fairy-tale figures who turn out to be more complicated than their labels. Kelly Barnhill tells a complete stand-alone story rather than opening another long quest. Choose it if the rewritten folklore and warm bonds appealed to you, and you want an enchanted world that takes its emotional stakes seriously.