Marvelous premise. True originality. Many lovable and memorable multigenerational characters.

I really love that the grandparent and children generations have good relationships in this book, children and parents too. At the beginning I thought that the grandparents and children might have shared adventures in this book and I would have enjoyed that. It didn’t happen though.

I haven’t been wild about fairy tales since I was an early reader. For this series I do love how because fairy tales have no known original source edition how that makes them dangerous. I admire the creativity of this series.

What is a shame with this book is that book wandering is so magical and it took away some of the fun to have villains front and center throughout the book. I guess that’s where the adventure is but it isn’t what I enjoy the most.

I do like the humor in this book.

I found this book just a tad too scary at several points, especially when I thought of my 8-12 year old self. No wonder I was freaked out about fairy tales as a preschooler, even though I got the sanitized versions.

I loved The Secret Garden passage and the illustration that went with it!!! It was my favorite couple of pages in this story. I’m glad it wasn’t full of only fairy tales. I did enjoy this version of Rapunzel though. Ha!

The real world type politics that was part of the story kind of took away some of the magic for me. This happens in a lot of fantasy books, including the Harry Potter books and many others and I’m usually okay with it and often even appreciate it but for this book I think I was more in the mood for and expected escape. I’ve also read many other children’s books with villains as bad as the ones in this book/series but I didn’t want this sort of content in this story since the scary parts interfered with the magical feelings I could have been feeling, the innocent ones at least.

The ending was weird. 1. I’m assuming this ended on a cliffhanger and I do plan to continue with the series to find out what happens. 2. The Epilogue had some factual information about the history of fairy tales being collected/written. It was an interesting few pages but given that the story seemed to end abruptly it seemed peculiar to me to have that information tacked on where it was.

The illustrations are charming.

There is a glossary of French words in the back. Tilly and Oscar spend a lot of time in this book in Paris with Oscar’s father, grandmother, and some other characters.

Some quotes that I liked:

“People are good at not noticing things that don’t affect them.”

“Nothing is truly impossible inside a book.”

“Do not wait too long for something special to present itself. Go out and find it.”

“But there was a magic in helping people find the perfect book for someone they loved”

“…It contains the meaning of life. In a novel?…Where else would you find it?”

“All stories are rooted in something real, even the most fantastical and impossible ones”

“It is rare that the people who want to be in power are the best people to do it.”

“Books aren’t interested in who is reading them… A book will welcome any reader, any age, any background, any point of view. Books don’t care if you can understand every word in them, or if you want to skip bits or reread bits. Books welcome everyone who wants to explore them, and thankfully, no one has worked out a way to stop that.”

“You’ve spent too long in books if you’re narrating your own life.” ( )

A sequel to Tilly and the Bookwanderers. I enjoyed spending more time with Oscar's family and the politics of the underlibrary, as the fascist factions are rising and demanding more control in bookwandering. Gretchen as a character never quite lands though, I think we are supposed to feel sympathy for her love of freedom, but it just comes across as naive stupidity. Or maybe that is exactly what the author is aiming for, and the plot of these books is that Tilly is in a world where all adults are biased and flawed, and has to navigate a way through somehow? ( )

I liked the first book in this series, but this one just bombed. Anna James' notion of people jumping in and out of books was super creative. In Book #2, things went massively sideways. Tilly turned into a petulant child: unwilling to listen to her mother and grandparents warnings. After some politics at the British Underlibrary resulted in the ousting of the former boss, her elected replacement kicks out Tilly's family. Tilly and her BFF Oskar head off to Paris to visit Oskar's relatives, where they meet the free spirit owner of a book shop, who encourages them to explore fairy tales, which are deemed dangerous because they are stories told without the safety of source books. Things go badly wrong, with plot holes (think pot holes), characters moving between stories or disappearing, because of manipulation by the new archvillains. 1.5 stars maybe. ( )

Tilly and her friend Oskar are bookwanderers; they can travel into stories and join in with the characters. In Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales the children have been warned not to travel into Fairy Tales as they have always been dangerous but at the moment they appear to be particularly unstable. When the children go off to Paris to stay with Oskar's dad for the weekend they are warned not to bookwander at all while they are away but will the temptation prove to be too great, especially when Oskar learns more about his own bookwandering heritage...

A good sequel to Tilly and the Bookwanderers and I can't wait to find out what happens in Book 3. Somehow this book felt to me like a passing transition between the first story and the next, like it's part of the story that has to be told but which wouldn't stand up on its own all that well. for me it lacks the brilliance and sparkle of Book 1... still 4 stars and a very good read but book 1 was a tough act to follow! ( )

A cute follow up book in The Pages & Co. series. Not as strong as the first, but we get a lot more mischief and adventure in this one. Tilly and her best friend Oskar are told NOT to explore fairy tales because they don't have the safety of source books. So of course they decide to go bookwandering in one and everything goes wrong. Not wrong in the way that Tilly's grandparents warned, but wrong in that pieces of the story seem missing and characters are acting... well out of character. Could it have anything to do with Mr. Chalk the villain from the first book or is this a new evil? Lot of fun adventures, cute quips, love the comments about librarians. I'm interested to see where the third book goes! ( )