WHATEVER AFTER SERIES, BY SARAH MYLNOWSKI

What a cute idea for a chapter book series: current day, fractured fairy tales! This author has written thirteen of them, so far. I read the most recent one: Spill the Beans, a spin-off of Jack and the Beanstalk. If you have young kids reading middle-grade chapter books and they like humor and fantasy, you should check these out.

Spill the Beans is simple to read, pretty basic and easy. It starts with two common conflicts: Abby has two friends who ask her to pick a side between them while her brother Jonah is depressed because he blames himself for his soccer team’s loss. Satisfying resolutions to these problems are revealed at the end. In between, Abby tells the story as she and Josh travel through a portal (magic mirror in the basement) right into Jack and the Beanstalk’s fairy tale. They “spill the beans” and things get messed up - but they work hard to fix it.

Full of humor, twists, and turns, your 2nd-6th grader will love this series. See if you can guess which fairy tales these other titles are about:

#1 Fairest of All

#2 If the Shoe Fits

#3 Sink or Swim

#4 Dream On

#5 Bad Hair Day

#6 Cold as Ice

#7 Beauty Queen

#8 Once Upon a Frog

#9 Genie in a Bottle

#10 Sugar and Spice

#11 Two Peas in a Pod

#12 Seeing Red

And, how cool is it that kids love these books so much that they do this at sleepovers?

Enjoy reading!