By Adam Gidwitz
Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and straight through eight of the bloodiest, funniest fairy tales the Brothers Grimm ever wrote.
This is Hansel and Gretel like your child has never heard them, the real old gruesome Grimm versions, stitched together into one journey. The two children leave home after learning a terrible truth about their parents, then wander through eight dark tales, meeting a baker who cooks children, a devil, a dragon, and worse. A narrator keeps breaking in to warn you when the truly awful parts are coming, sometimes telling you outright to send small children out of the room first.
This is the darkest stop on the shelf, and for the right child it's the most thrilling. A Land of Stories reader who was drawn to the fairy-tale bones will love how this one goes back to the source and refuses to flinch. The narrator's constant butting-in is the trick that makes the horror bearable and hilarious at once, keeping a knowing arm around your child the whole way through. It's short, propulsive, and unlike anything else they've read.