A Tale Dark and Grimm

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Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked creatures as witches, along with kindly strangers and other helpful folk. Based in part on the Grimms' fairy tales Faithful Johannes, Hansel and Gretel, The seven ravens, Brother and sister, The robber bridegroom, and The devil and his three golden hairs.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Bloody Fairy Tale submitted by PBS on June 20, 2011, 9:05am This young adult book is a good retelling of several Grimm fairy tales combined into one narrative. The book is quite self-aware (perhaps overly so) of how gory it is. This is not a PG book, or even PG-13. The interjections of the storyteller are informative and offer interesting interpretive points, though somewhat overdone, and the story itself is compelling and has an air of authenticity.

Dark Humor submitted by orcomai on August 15, 2012, 4:49pm This book is great for people who really like dark humor an sarcasm. I loved it. This book is one of my favs.

bloody and violent- AWESOME! submitted by bookworm12345 on June 17, 2013, 1:23pm pretty awesome book. Not very appropriate for kids under the age of 6 because of blood.
One of my favorite books

Amazingly funny submitted by seadocks on July 28, 2013, 11:41am This book and the other one by the same author are great fun. They are even better when you read them to your kids aloud, the blood and gore is minimal but the change of voice and wit involved is priceless. I have read this out loud to my kids twice and now I am writing this review and one of them saw me and wants me to request it again. Get it, after I check it out and bring it back, it is great. Unless you are trying to shelter your kids from the realities of fairy tale life and the violence inherent in tales meant to scare the crap out of kids so they listen to their parents and don't make bad decisions.

RECOMMENDED submitted by GwenC on June 23, 2014, 6:17pm I probably would not recommend this book to anyone under the age of 8 but, I really liked this book. It is pretty violent and there is lots of blood. The reason I liked this book was because since it was so gory you always wondered what would happen next. It was very suspenseful. Overall I thought it was pretty great!!

Ignore the blood and gore, and it's great! submitted by Bookbird on July 8, 2014, 12:40pm I read Grimm's Fairy Tales and I really loved comparing the originals to the versions in this book! The author does a great job of fitting Hansel and Gretel's adventures into stories such as the Seven Swallows, The Devil's Three Golden Hairs, etc... You can even read this book aloud to kids as long as you heed the author's warnings about when to stop reading :)

Scary but great submitted by abbyrk42 on June 13, 2015, 12:28pm This is a great book with a big mish mash of a lot of different fairy tales starring Hansel and Gretel

Grimmy submitted by FordAlpha on June 26, 2018, 9:26pm I am an adult who enjoys reading well-reviewed kids' books, so I can't speak for how an actual kid would like this book. For parents, your feelings about "A Tale Dark and Grimm" (and Adam Gidwitz's other books) will depend on how you feel about the "authentic" folktales on which they're based. (I use the quotation marks because the Grimms themselves, and other fairytale authors, combined, altered, and re-invented many of the original tales they collected.)

My own mother did not care for the Grimms and tried repeatedly to throw out the volume our grandma sent. I rescued it each time, and read many of the tales, and it's on my own bookshelves today, but I did not actually enjoy the Grimm tales as a child. I rescued them and read them more out of academic interest. Yes, I was a weird kid.

If you haven't read the Grimms' tales, perhaps you are familiar with the musical "Into the Woods". How do you feel about it? How do you feel about the second act? If you love it, as I do, then you will probably enjoy "A Tale Dark and Grimm" and be happy to let your kid(s) read it (although it has a good deal more on-screen blood and guts than the Sondheim musical). If you aren't so fond of the dark twists, senseless deaths, and irresponsible adults in the Woods, then you probably won't like "A Tale Dark and Grimm".

The Grimm tales it draws on are pretty faithfully retold, yet skillfully woven into a single narrative. The author's interjections can be annoying, but they do serve to soften the blows of violence that might otherwise really freak out young readers. And if you dig redemption, forgiveness, and parent-child reconciliation, this book will tug at your heart. I'm willing to forgive Gidwitz for sometimes pulling his punches, and thank him for imbuing these frightful folktales with timeless meaning.