by Adam Gidwitz
ages: 11+
First sentence: “Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome.”
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Throughout the decades, fairy tales have been watered down. One could blame Disney, or blame the fact that we’ve come to believe that children can’t handle violence. That somehow, scary stories, stories with blood and gore are bad for them. And I’m not sure I disagree: violence for violence’s sake can be desensitizing. But the Grimm fairy tales aren’t that way. Yes, they’re scary, yes they are violent, but it seems to all have a purpose.

Adam Gidwitz doesn’t just retell a few of the more obscure Grimm tales. He takes the Hansel and Gretel story and morphs it from a weird step-mother-hate story into something more. There’s kings and queens, danger and temptation, loss and redemption, and dragons! It has everything. Which, even though sounds a bit like overkill, works. Gidwitz gave the original story depth and purpose. And yes, by keeping the tales creepy and violent and fascinating, Gidwitz embodies the original Grimm tales. It’s fascinating and wonderful.

But the best thing about the novel is the narrator. Seriously. Having an active narrator in a story like this is a tricky thing. It could have fallen flat on its face, and maybe for some people it will, because (s)he interjects with humor and explanations quite often as the story goes along. It pulls the reader out of the story, but it doesn’t pull them away from the story. It works as an interjection, because it’s not intrusive. And I think, for kids especially, it actually helps having a narrator — a storyteller, actually — looking over your shoulder, giving you information you need to not only process what’s going on, but to really enjoy it as well.

Excellent.