When Chris Colfer was usually 20, he’d already been named one of GQ magazine’s group of a year, carrying sung and acted his approach into a hearts of America as Kurt, a high-pitched, plainly happy brunet who is unabashedly himself on a strike TV uncover “Glee.” Colfer’s star had risen so discerning in a year he’d starred on a Fox comedy that a literary representative asked him to coop his journal — an try Colfer had a good clarity to decrease given it was so premature.

Instead, Colfer offering “The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell” (Little, Brown: 448 pp., $17.99 ages 8 and up) — an thought he’d been percolating given age 10. His angel story mash-up, about twins who tumble into story land and embark on a scavenger hunt by a kingdoms of Goldilocks and other mythological damsels in distress, will be published Tuesday.

“I’ve been spooky with angel story characters given my mom started reading stories to me as a kid,” pronounced a now-22-year-old actor, adding that a book his mom review didn’t have illustrations yet photos of dolls in several positions. “It was really creepy,” pronounced Colfer, who though found impulse in a ethics and characters of a Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.

Colfer’s favorites were “Snow White,”"Sleeping Beauty” and”Cinderella” “because they’re like a angel story sampler platter” with a castle, a abuse and a king who saves a day. All 3 beauties, and during slightest a dozen more, are benefaction and accounted for in “The Land of Stories,” that starts with “Once on a time…” and follows a 12-year-old hermit and sister as they try to collect strands of Rapunzel’s hair, a frame of bellow from Red Riding Hood’s basket and other clearly unfit equipment for a wish that will let them lapse home.

Like any story value a angel dust, “The Land of Stories” is infused with a moral: “There’s a whole universe out there usually watchful for we to learn it,” Colfer said. “‘Happily ever after’ is something that we make. It’s not given to you.”

Colfer’s veteran success offers vital proof. “With ‘Glee,’ I’ve had my possess ‘Cinderella’ story,” he said, yet he acknowledges that celebrity isn’t a happily ever after it’s mostly portrayed to be. “God, no. It used to expostulate me nuts when people said, ‘So. You used to be bullied. Now you’re famous.’ That usually opens me adult to some-more bullying. Yes, I’m really propitious we get to do what we adore — to act and be on TV. I’m really fortunate, yet once you’re out there, you’re out there, and it’s like celebrity is station on a post in a swarming room and giving a whole universe a possibility to go during you.”

Colfer, who is plainly gay, was so exceedingly bullied in center propagandize that he was home-schooled for a integrate of years in his local Clovis, Calif. Is it coincidence, then, that a twin protagonists in his middle-grade authorial entrance are roughly a same age when they shun into a land of make-believe?

Only subconsciously, he said. Twelve “is a really essential age when kids realize, ‘Oh. This is a genuine world.’ It’s a age when kids stop desiring in magic,” pronounced Colfer, who grew adult reading “Harry Potter,” “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Alice in Wonderland, “The Wizard of Oz,”"Peter Pan” and other escapist classics about alluring swap realities. QuotingJ.K. Rowling, Colfer pronounced sorcery is so appealing given it’s a faith of energy in oneself.

“It’s desiring in whatever ability we possess on a inside,” he said. “There’s something enchanting about desiring there’s sorcery in you.”

The enterprise to shun into a book was mostly desirous by Colfer’s childhood. He was in and out of hospitals with his epileptic younger sister and was himself cramped to a sanatorium bed for 3 months after medicine for an putrescent lymph node. “I remember being trapped and bending to an IV and being miserable and wanting to go outward and play and be a child and we couldn’t,” pronounced Colfer, who hopes his book will be enjoyed by readers of all ages who conclude a C.S. Lewis view that opens a book: “Some day we will be aged adequate to start reading angel tales again.”

Colfer describes himself as “a vital angel story purist. we can’t mount it when people adjust them into something they’re not ostensible to be,” he said, before admitting, “I’m a sum hypocrite.” In “The Land of Stories,” Colfer takes vital liberties with a many classical angel tales he fuses together.

When one of a twins wants to stand Rapunzel’s building as if it were a traveller attraction, her hermit takes a stairs. And Jack, of beanstalk fame, couldn’t caring reduction about a giant. He’s held in a adore triangle with Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood.

Colfer’s genuine life oblivion-to-everywhere story has authorised him to supplement some-more realistic, psychological perspectives to classical fairy-tale characters who, after a strange stories ended, seemed to have left on to live happily ever after. Cinderella, it turns out, had a formidable time transitioning from menial to black and earning a common people’s respect. Snow White’s Evil Queen is also estimable of compassion. “A knave is usually a plant whose story hasn’t been told,” he writes.

In “Land of Stories,” Colfer showcases his talent for crafting fancifully talented plots and multidimensional characters. His writing, however, borders on a blasé. It lacks a healthy glamour and discerning wit he frequently displays in TV interviews — a talent he honed as a invulnerability from being relentlessly bullied as a child.

A high propagandize thespian, Colfer auditioned for “Glee” during age 17 for a paraplegic purpose eventually given to Kevin McHale. But “Glee” co-creator Ryan Murphy was so tender with his try-out that he combined a Kurt impression to expel Colfer in a uncover that was nominated for 19 Emmy awards in a initial deteriorate and won a Golden Globe for best low-pitched or comedy radio array final year — a same year Colfer himself picked adult a Golden Globe for ancillary actor.

“The Land of Stories” is usually a many new instance of Colfer’s still mutation from a TV star treasured by 14-year-old girls and a homosexual media into something of a Renaissance man. While penning a book final year, he also wrote, constructed and starred in a film “Struck by Lightning,” a comedic, postmortem recounting of a exploits of an scarcely desirous teenage journalist. The film premiered during a Tribeca Film Festival in Apr and will be in theaters this December. Colfer is already essay another screenplay about a 1930s mental haven that, he says, “is totally opposite from anything I’ve ever done.” He’ll tell a second novel this year and skeleton to write additional titles for “The Land of Stories” array as well.

And afterwards there’s “Glee.” Season 4 starts filming this month and will see Colfer’s Kurt impression “mentored by Sarah Jessica Parker in some capacity,” he said.

“People are wondering because I’m going from behaving to essay a children’s book, yet to me it’s all personification pretend,” he said. “I was usually innate wanting to be a storyteller, so as prolonged as we get to perform someone, either it’s essay a book or screenplay or being in front of or behind a camera, I’m happy. That’s where my tranquillity is.”

susan.carpenter@latimes.com