FREE INTERACTIVE STORY · AGES 7–9
The Spell That Went Sideways: a free interactive story
In Wizard Village, a young wizard’s tidying spell goes sideways after a sneeze, and everything starts drifting off the ground. Your child makes two choices to help put things right, and each path ends in a different, funny way.
- Reading age 8
- 2 short chapters, 2 choices and 4 endings
- About 3 minutes
- Fantasy
Read the story
Choose your hero
Paint it your way
Chapter 1Atishoo!
In Wizard Village, the cottages had crooked roofs, the lanterns lit themselves and the little islands floated above the hills.
Fen was a young wizard who had just learned a tidying spell. “Watch this,” Fen told Zuri, raising a wand at the messy garden.
But at the very last moment, a dandelion seed tickled Fen’s nose. “Atishoo!”
The spell shot out sideways. Instead of tidying the garden, it made everything in the village a tiny bit lighter than air.
Flowerpots began to rise. A teapot drifted past a window. Sixpence the cat floated up from a wall, looking extremely surprised.
What happens next is up to your child
What should Zuri do first?
Questions for grown-ups to ask
Did you spot it?
- EasyWhat made the spell go wrong?Answer: Fen sneezed at the last moment.
- MediumWhat happened to things in the village?Answer: They became lighter than air and began to float.
- HarderIn “Too heavy by half”, why did the hero need to add a pinch of dandelion seeds?Answer: The dust made things too heavy, so a little lightness balanced it out.
Talk about it
- Which ending did you like best? Was it better to fix the mistake or to enjoy it?
- Have you ever made a mistake that turned out to be fun?
Words to talk about
- drifted
- Moved slowly, carried by the air or water.
- spectacles
- An old word for glasses.
- dignified
- Calm and proud, even when something silly is happening.
- reverse
- To turn something back the other way.
Reading it together
The Spell That Went Sideways is a funny fantasy at Litsee’s reading level for age 8, with two choices and four endings. The first choice is about how to start (get help, or deal with the problem yourself), and the second weighs fixing a mistake against making the best of it.
Ask your child to predict what each jar will do before choosing, and then check. The heavy dust ending shows that a fix can go too far, which is a nice idea to talk about.
A child who enjoys this might like to invent their own sideways spell: what would happen if a spell to make tea, or to tidy a bedroom, went wrong?
About this story
- Reading age
- 8 (ages 7–9). Written for Litsee’s reading level for age 8, where sentences are mostly 8–15 words long.
- Length
- 2 short chapters, 2 choices and 4 endings. Each way through is 243–262 words.
- Reading time
- About 3 minutes for a 8-year-old reading on their own, at Litsee’s pacing of 100 words a minute for that age. Reading aloud to your child is usually quicker.
- Book band
- Roughly Brown, if your child’s school uses book bands (schemes differ; see our book bands guide).
- Characters
- Fen, a young wizard, Old Mother Moss, who runs the spell shop, a cat called Sixpence
- Theme
- Fantasy