By James Riley
Jack, grandson of the famous beanstalk Jack, gets swept into a quest across a mashed-together fairy-tale world with a girl who fell out of the sky in a t-shirt reading Punk Princess.
Jack lives in a fairy-tale world and can't manage to live up to his own last name. His grandfather was the Jack who climbed the beanstalk, and Jack can't seem to do anything right. Then a girl named May falls out of the sky in strange clothes, with no memory of how she got there and no clue to who she is beyond the words 'Punk Princess' printed on her shirt. When the Wicked Queen's people grab May's grandmother, Jack and May race off across the fairy-tale kingdoms to get her back, with a relentless Huntsman on their trail the whole way.
The draw here is speed and jokes, not depth, and for a lot of readers that's exactly the point. Jack and May bicker their way across a map full of famous fairy-tale characters who've all been handed a twist, and the pace barely lets up. If your child came out of The Land of Stories wanting more of the adventure and the wisecracks than the feelings, this one delivers. It ends on a cliffhanger that pulls straight into book two, so it helps to have the sequel handy.