I adore Adam Gidwitz and it pains me to say that I think a bit of the magic finally wore off a bit with this final entry in his Grimm series. As I started this book I found myself chuckling and gasping just as I did with the first two and then about half way through it all got a little preachy and dull. The intrusive narrator finally got to me and I really disliked the super self- conscious foray into meta-fiction. To me, that sort of thing misses the point ENTIRELY. To quote Gidwitz himself:
The land of the fairy tale is not the external world. It is, rather, the internal one. The real Grimm fairy tale takes a child’s deepest desires and most complex fears, and it reifies them, physicalizes them, turns them into a narrative. The narrative does not belittle those fears, nor does it simplify them. But it does represent those complex fears and deep desires in a form that is digestible by the child’s mind.
When the narrator buts in and TELLS the reader what this all means and how to feel about it, I feel he’s completely undermined the whole thing. Ah well, I still admire and applaud Gidwitz for his overall contribution to children’s literature and, especially, for giving fairy tales their due. And I still say the first book (A Tale Dark and Grimm) is one of the cleverest books for children I've read in a long time!
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