Gidwitz, Adam.
A TALE DARK AND GRIMM
New York : Dutton Children's Books, 2010
IL 5-8, RL 4.6
ISBN 0525423346

(2 booktalks)

“Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome.  I know, I know.  You don’t believe me.  I don’t blame you.  A little while ago, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.  Little girls in red caps skipping around the forest? Awesome? I don’t think so.
But then I started to read them.  The real, Grimm ones.  Very few little girls in red caps in those.
Well, there’s one.  But she gets eaten.
You see, there’s another story in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  It is the story of two children—a girl named Gretel and a boy named Hansel—traveling through a magical and terrifying world.  It is the story of two children striving, and failing, and then not failing.  It is the story of two children finding out the meanings of things.
(But) before I go on, a word of warning:  Grimm’s stories—the ones that weren’t changed for little kids---are violent and bloody.  And what you’re going to hear now, the one true tale in the Tales of Grimm, is as violent and bloody as you can imagine.
Really.
So if such things bother you, we should probably stop right now.
You see, the land of Grimm can be a harrowing place.  But it is worth exploring.  For, in life, it is in the darkest zones one finds the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom. And, of course, the most blood.”
A Tale Dark and Grimm----not for the faint of heart.    (New Hampshire Great Stone Face Award nominee, 2011-2012)

Booktalk #2

Imagine, if you will, that fairy tales really existed.  Imagine that Hansel and Gretel really were a brother and sister who wandered through a dark and grim wood.  Now, imagine that there was more to the story than their pushing the old witch into the oven and running off.  A Tale Dark and Grimm takes the story of Hansel and Gretel one step further allowing the reader to see into the dark and Grimm wood of the Grimm brothers. Their story is an awesome and scary tale of beheadings, monstrous beasts, and even the devil.  Readers beware, this is not the cute story of breadcrumbs and candy-covered cottages that you think you know.  This story is dark, scary, and full of violence, but it is a good story. The author teases us, "It may be frightening, and it's certainly bloody, but, unlike those other fairy tells you know, this one is true." Read it if you dare.  (Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Awards, 2011-2012)