Bound To Stay Bound

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School Library Journal - 11/01/2010 Gr 3 Up—With disarming delicacy and unexpected good cheer, Gidwitz reweaves some of the most shocking and bloody stories that the Brothers Grimm collected into a novel that's almost addictively compelling. He gives fair warning that this is no prettified, animated version of the old stories. "Are there any small children in the room now?" he asks midway through the first tale, "If so, it would be best if we just...hurried them off to bed. Because this is where things start to get, well...awesome." Many of humanity's least attractive, primal emotions are on display: greed, jealousy, lust, and cowardice. But, mostly it's the unspeakable betrayal by bad parents and their children's journey to maturation and forgiveness that are at the heart of the book. Anyone who's ever questioned why Hansel and Gretel's father is so readily complicit in their probable deaths and why the brother and sister, nonetheless, return home after their harrowing travails will find satisfying explanations here. Gidwitz is terrifying and funny at the same time. His storytelling is so assured that it's hard to believe this is his debut novel. And his treatment of the Grimms' tales is a whole new thing. It's equally easy to imagine parents keeping their kids up late so they can read just one more chapter aloud, kids finishing it off under the covers with a flashlight, and parents sneaking into their kids' rooms to grab it off the nightstand and finish it themselves.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY - Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 11/15/2010 As if Hansel and Gretel didn’t already have it tough in their original fairy tale, Gidwitz retrofits a handful of other obscure Grimm stories and casts the siblings as heroes. Connecting the dots, he crafts a narrative that has the twins beheaded (and reheaded, thankfully), dismembered, hunted, killed, brought back to life, sent to hell, and a number of other terrible fates en route to their happily ever after. Some adults will blanch at the way Gidwitz merrily embraces the gruesomeness prevalent in the original tales, but kids won’t mind a bit, and they’ll get some laughs out of the way he intrudes on the narrative (“This is when things start to get, well . . . awesome. But in a horrible, bloody kind of way”). The author also snarkily comments on the themes, sometimes a bit too heavy-handedly. The question many readers might have about the Grimms’ tales is perfectly pondered by the long-suffering twins: “Are there no good grown-ups anymore?” Not in these forests, kiddos. - Copyright 2010 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 12/01/2010 It used to be that fairy tales were as steeped in gore and mayhem as they were in stark beauty and wisdom. So notes our storyteller, who speaks in direct address to his readers, warning them that the stories they are about to read are of the old style and that scaredy-pants had best leave the room or close the book. Then he proceeds to follow the fates of Hansel and Gretel, who in this version are born to royalty but run away when they learn that their father was happy to behead them to get what he wanted. (Sure, they got their heads back, but still.) They set out in search of better adults, and between a witch that wants to cook and eat them, a man who wishes his own children away in order to keep them, a jolly youngish man who steals girls’ souls and chops up their bodies, and a duke who gambles Hansel away to the devil himself, they don’t find any. Ah, well; Hansel and Gretel prove as resourceful and brave in these tales as they do in their more familiar one, and while they are saddened by the general state of things, they manage to restore their family and take their place as king and queen. The storytelling here is cunning, with strongly oral prose and witty asides that, while funny, also provide a cross between a warning and a dare that things are about to get gruesome and you might want to stop reading if you’re squeamish. The stories themselves are peppered with understated humor as well as well-paced adventure, clever innovations, and plot twists that have the flavor of the traditional stories that inspired them. For readers who are interested in fairy-tale revisions that are funny but not quite parodic, gory but not quite horrible, and that hearken back to a time before Disney, this will be more satisfying than a pig-out at a gingerbread house. KC - Copyright 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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