In a Glass Grimmly

by Adam Gidwitz Narrated by Adam Gidwitz

Overview

From the Newbery Honor-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Inquisitor's Tale.

If you dare, join Jack and Jill as they embark on a harrowing quest through a new set of tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others. Follow along as they enter startling new landscapes that may (or may not) be scary, bloody, terrifying, and altogether true in this hair-raising companion to Adam Gidwitz's widely acclaimed, award-winning debut, A Tale Dark & Grimm.
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An Oprah Kids' Reading List Pick
A Publishers Weekly Best New Book of the Week Pick
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For more twisted tales look for A Tale Dark & Grimm and The Grimm Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review

Each story flows into the next with humor, cleverness and an oddly absorbing realism…Gidwitz plays fast and loose, with reality a springboard from which to reapproach age-old stories.
—Holly Black

Holly Black

"Each story flows into the next with humor, cleverness and an oddly absorbing realism…Gidwitz plays fast and loose, with reality a springboard from which to reapproach age-old stories."

Kirkus Reviews

The author of A Tale Dark and Grimm (2010) starts over--sending young Jack and Jill on a fresh quest for self-knowledge through trials and incidents drawn (stolen, according to the author) from a diverse array of European folk and fairy tales. Foolishly pledging their lives on finding the long-lost Seeing Glass, cousins Jack and Jill, with a three-legged talking frog to serve as the now-requisite comical animal sidekick, set out from the kingdom of Märchen. They climb a beanstalk, visit a goblin market and descend into a fire-belching salamander's lair (and then down its gullet). In a chamber of bones ("It gave new meaning to the term rib vaulting"), they turn the tables on a trio of tricksy child eaters. Injecting authorial warnings and commentary as he goes, Gidwitz ensures that each adventure involves at least severe embarrassment or, more commonly, sudden death, along with smacking great washes of gore, vomit and (where appropriate) stomach acid. Following hard tests of wit and courage, the two adventurers, successful in both ostensible and real quests, return to tell their tales to rapt children (including one named "Hans Christian," and another "Joseph," or "J.J.") and even, in the end, mend relations with their formerly self-absorbed parents. Not so much a set of retellings as a creative romp through traditional and tradition-based story-scapes, compulsively readable and just as read-out-loudable. (source note) (Fantasy. 11-14)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173401663
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Series:	A Tale Dark & Grimm , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

Fairy tales were, in a word, horrible.

Two hundred years ago, in Germany, the Brothers Grimm first wrote down that version of Cinderella in which the stepsisters slice off pieces of their feet and get their eyes pecked out. In England, a man names Joseph Jacobs collected tales like Jack the Giant Killer, which is about a boy named Jack who goes around murdering giants in the most gruesome and grotesque ways imaginable. And there was this guy called Hans Christian Andersen, who lived in Denmark and wrote fairy tales filled with sadness and humiliation and loneliness. Even Mother Goose’s rhymes could get pretty dark—after all, Jack and Jill go up a hill, and then Jack falls down and breaks his head open.

Yes, fairy tales were horrible. In the original sense of the word.

But even these horrible fairy tales and nursery rhymes aren’t true. They’re just stories. Right?

Not exactly.

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