There is a series of novels by E. D. Baker set in a world where many familiar fairy tales are unfolding called Tales of the Wide-Awake Princess. I love fairy tale worlds and find it always interesting when they come with maps. How do you lay out a bunch of disconnected stories in a range of kingdoms and/or time periods and probably a lot of woods? It’s an interesting challenge.

The maps are credited to Kimberly Bender and vary between books, each focusing primarily on the area the adventure in that story explores. The first book has the largest I have seen (although I have only read the first several books) and is perhaps the widest view of the world. Treecrest, the kingdom in the top center of this map, is where the heroine lives.

Much as I appreciate seeing this pulled out view of the surrounding kingdoms, I actually find the maps in later books far more interesting. The one below is from the second book, Unlocking the Spell. This map shows only Treecrest and the kingdoms to the west of it (including one not on the above map).

What I love about this map is that we get so much more detail! Not only is there some whole new land covered, but there are more castles with labels and more points of interest that are familiar from various tales and the adventure in the story (the pigs’ and bears’ houses, the dwarves’ cottage, the gingerbread cottage, etc.).

And in true fairy tale fashion, it seems like basically this whole place is made up of woods and castles! I particularly like how the artist varied the style of trees at random. It keeps the image from being too boring visually, but still conveys that this is a lot of woods.

I’m sure that I will share more fairy tale world maps in the future since there are so many of them. I love how this one feels fairy tale-ish to me visually both at a glance and when you look specifically at the details. It’s a very well done map for the series it belongs to!