They chronicle the adventures of the Grace children, twins Simon and Jared and their older sister Mallory, after they move into the Spiderwick Estate and discover a world of fairies that they never knew existed.

The first book, The Field Guide, was published in 2003 and then followed by The Seeing Stone (2003), Lucinda's Secret (2003), The Ironwood Tree (2004), and The Wrath of Mulgarath (2004).

It opens in Maine, where nine-year-old identical twins Jared and Simon and their thirteen-year-old sister Mallory move into the decrepit Spiderwick Estate with their mother, Helen.

Following a clue in the form of a riddle-poem, Jared finds Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You in a secret compartment in a trunk in the attic.

After the Grace children ignore Thimbletack's warning to destroy the Guide, Simon is abducted by a group of goblins who live in the woods surrounding the house.

After encountering a wounded griffin, they find the goblin camp and a plethora of prisoners hanging in cages made from refuse from the trees.

After they arrive home, Simon convinces them to return to the now empty camp to release the rest of the goblins' victims and they take the injured griffin to the carriage house.

After getting grounded by their scared and angry mother for worrying her and coming home late, they discover that Thimbletack, enraged at Jared's forceful taking of the seeing stone, has again become a Boggart and reverted to his mischievous ways.

They eventually agree to consult their Great-Aunt Lucinda, who is now staying in a psychiatric hospital and is the only person whom they know to have been in contact with Arthur Spiderwick, who was her father.

She is horrified that the Grace family is staying at the Estate, which she says is not safe, and even more worried when she hears that they have the Guide, believing her father to have taken it with him when he disappeared.

Once home, the Grace children decide to find out what happened to their great-great uncle, and set out from the Estate with a map of the area on which is written "September 14th.

Mallory is revealed to be sleeping in a glass-coffin dressed in medieval garb (similarly to Snow White), with the dwarves saying she is now immortal, so long as she stays in the coffin.

Escaping their cage, the twins free Mallory and meet a strange creature, called a knocker, who tells them the way out by listening to the stones.

They secretly watch Mulgarath, a shapeshifting ogre who wants to rule the world, callously orders the death of the dwarves for having been tricked into not getting the Field Guide from Jared.

Hogsqueal the hobgoblin informs them that the house was destroyed by the goblins who have kidnapped their mother and taken her to the palace of their fearsome master, Mulgarath the ogre.

Accompanied by Hogsqueal, the siblings journey to Mulgarath's palace, an immense citadel made of garbage where they battle a legion of goblins.

The ogre brags of his plan and reveals that the Field Guide is underneath his throne, and Jared mockingly tells Mulgarath that he and his siblings have killed all the dragons.

On the following day, the Nixie, named Taloa, gives Nick and Laurie the Sight and sends them to find her six sisters, who were separated when their pond was destroyed.

They find the pond dried, the surrounding forest burnt and the bodies of three of the nixies, accidentally waking up a giant, which they mistook for a hill.

Once there, they are disappointed when Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black don't believe them, but they then run into Jared and Simon Grace, who offer to help them gather useful information.

The place appears to be deserted, and after a quick incident with Will-O'-the-Wisps, the kids take several papers including a diagram of a giant trap.

The kids help him to his house and, once home, Laurie gives Jules a keychain containing the four-leafed clover (which they no longer need, having been given permanent Sight by Taloa).

Based on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Nick thinks about the possibility of asking the merfolk to lure the giants to the sea, since they seem to be hypnotized by a nixie's singing.

After getting Nick's model Viking ship from the hotel, they drive around a route provided by Sandspur of where the giants are, playing the mermaids' song.

After breaking into the house, they find more of Jack's annotations, which compare the hydra, shown as a group of intertwined wyrm dragons, to the legend of the Rat King.

After dropping the nixies in a nearby pond (their reward for having sung to the giants), Jules, Laurie and Nick pass by Cindy's house and notice a large sinkhole close to it.

They are portrayed as living many years, so many of the faeries encountered by the main characters also met Arthur Spiderwick and other long-dead humans in the past, without having aged.

The species of fairies in the series are mainly taken from European mythology and folklore and Medieval bestiaries, including brownies, goblins, dragons, sprites, and elves, among many others.

Directed by Mark Waters, it starred Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Martin Short, Nick Nolte, and Seth Rogen.

[5] In August 2023, Deadline reported that the series was no longer moving forward at Disney+ despite having been already completed due to cost cutting reasons, it will be shopped to other networks.