Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. Where? To the circus, of course.įortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz-sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. The narrator’s presence lessens action and emotion deepen funny gross-outs pop up amid serious violence and everything builds to one painful and triumphant catharsis. Old Grimm tales and Gidwitz’s original additions weave together into one arc, with fiercely loyal siblings Hansel and Gretel at the heart. Heads are lopped off, blood flows, men reach down girls’ throats and pull out their souls. The narrator contributes unnecessary platitudes, but on the plus side, savvily warns when little kids should leave the room, effectively cautioning big kids that upcoming content is sad or gory-and it really is. It’s an odd premise for a piece whose audience is surely aware of many fractured fairy tales that are dark and/or awesome. bloody,” while “all the versions of the stories you’ve heard … mind-numbingly boring” due to sanitization. The storyteller’s voice (presented in bold type) opens by asserting that original Grimm tales are “awesome,” “violent and. Fairy tales for the horror set blend themselves into one intact thread that’s satisfying enough to overcome an intrusive narrator.

A tale dark and grimm author