OCTOBER 2013: A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz - A great read for older Elementary and Middle Schooler's who like things scary!!!

"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."  pg. 1  A Tale Dark & Grimm
 
Author Adam Gidwitz takes readers on a harrowing and sometimes humorous adventure as they follow Hansel & Gretel through their own tale and eight other Grimm fairytales … eight other kind of scary Grimm fairytales.  While the narrator warns of impending doom, the author recreates some of Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm's lesser known tales.  The Seven Swallows, as told in the book, is based on The Seven Ravens, a very similar tale that didn't include Hansel and Gretel, but did include a little girl in search of her seven older brothers who had turned into ravens, and in order to free them, she has to … well, she has to do the same as Gretel does in The Seven Swallows, but I don't want to ruin the story for you, or scare you away!  Hansel and Gretel encounter every kind of scary on their journey, witches, an evil magician, and even a fierce dragon, but through it all they learn valuable lessons about life and how maybe, just maybe, they can "live happily ever after".  Read A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, to see how Hansel & Gretel come through their adventures.
 
If you enjoy A Tale Dark & Grimm, check out the second and third installments in the series In a Glass Grimmly and The Grimm Conclusion, or stop by the library for more frightening and mysterious reads.