The Wishing Spell

Alex is one of the protagonists in The Wishing Spell. She has short blond hair that’s “always kept neatly out of her face with a headband” (12), which represents her organized and perfectionist nature. Alex is book-smart and does well in school, things that make her feel socially awkward. As a result, she doesn’t have many friends in the real world and has grown up with characters from fairy tales as her best friends and role models. Alex believes rules are meant to be followed, and straying from the rules makes her uncomfortable, such as when she breaks Cinderella’s slipper to cut her and Conner’s restraints in Chapter 16. By the end of the book, Alex learns that sometimes rules need to be broken to achieve goals. Many of the fairy-tale characters she idolizes have broken the rules. Neither she nor they are perfect, and that’s okay.

Conner is the second protagonist of the novel. Unlike Alex, Conner is popular at school and skirts around the rules whenever possible. Conner is “painfully honest about his thoughts and opinions” (46-47), which allows him to speak his mind in tense situations. He has a knack for seeing when people are being treated unfairly for things that are out of their control, such as at Trix’s trial, and for offering unique solutions to problems, such as the rubber band idea for the Sleeping Kingdom.