Reckless by Cornelia Funke

Will Reckless has followed his brother through a magic mirror into a strange fairy tale world and been slashed by a Goyl, a terrible creature made of stone whose wounds turn flesh to stone courtesy of the magic of a dark fairy.  Jacob found the mirror in his father's study and although he has never found his father in the world beyond there is plenty of evidence that he was there, iron bridges, mementoes from his world in the city museum, and the memories of people.  But the world is under threat, the troglodyte Goyl have come out from beneath the mountains under their warmaking King Kami'en and the Empress is preparing to sacrifice her daughter for the price of peace.  A spellbinding ride through the darker side of fairytales, the corpses of Sleeping Beauty's failed suitors hang from the thorns of the roses that defended her castle, trees pinion humans to have their eyes pecked out, magic is as deadly as it is glamarous.  My only niggle was the apparent lack of care of Jacob for the mother and brother he left behind, but a great imagination

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

Castle Waiting begins as the fairy tale castle Sleeping Beauty slept in for 100 years before being woken by a prince, but Linda Medley asks what happened after she woke and went off with her price. Medley answers with a wonderfully bizarre story steeped in cultural mythology and fairy tales, homage paid to the talking animals of Aesop, to Grimm and Andersen but also, becuase this is a (beautifully drawn) graphic novel, to Rackham and Beardsley. The hardback itself is beautiful, a lovely size on buff coloured paper bound with elegant endpapers.

The Inside Story: The Sisters Grimm Book 8



This is Buckley's 8th Sisters Grimm book and once again it is full tilt.  Daphne and Sabrina Grimm are young sisters, fairy tale detectives and descendents of the great Brothers Grimm.  Along with the boy trickster king Puck they chase their arch enemies Pinocchio and The Master through the Book of Everafter, a kind of interactive storybook created to allow the Everafters - the storybook characters that populate the town of Ferryport Landing - to relive their infamous fables, fairy tales and legends.  But beyond the stories the three children leap through one after another in search of the Master and the girls' kidnapped baby brother something terrible is lurking in the margins and the final showdown turns out only to be a taste of worse to come.

Great fun and the idea of storybook characters being stuck playing out certain roles unable to escape from the boundaries of their stories is quite poignant.  The development of the characters of Sabrina, Daphne and Puck is interesting and sweetly sad too as they leave early childhood and Sabrina has to deal with new emerging emotions.

Books being read to our daughter

The Sisters Grimm Series


A great series about Daphne and Sabrina Grimm, the great great .... grandaughters of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the authors of the great Grimm's Fairy Tales. They come to live with their previously unknown grandmother in Ferryport Landing, a place where fairy tale characters, known as Everafters, are very much alive and real and trapped within the town by an enchantment that will not break until the last Grimm is dead. Cue mayhem, mysteries and a great deal of fun, and one of our favourite characters of all time, the fairy boy Puck, the self proclaimed trickster king. The hardbacks of each edition are beautiful, lovely illustrations, torn edges to the pages, looking like a great Grimm's edition

Book 1: The Fairy Tale Detectives
Sabrina and Daphne Grimm's parents have disappeared and Sabrina has negotiated them through a series of appalling foster homes, but now a crazy lady says she's their grandmother, but they don't have one, do they?

Book 2: The Unusual Suspects
The girls start school and plunge headfirst into a mystery when a teacher is found murdered

Book 3: The Problem Child
Red Riding Hood was driving clinically insane by the murder of her family by the Big Bad Wolf, and now she's escaped the asylum

Book 4: Once Upon A Crime
Location moves to New York City and the expatirate Everafter community, the hidden land of Faerie and some awkward truths about the girls' mother

Book 5: Magic and Other Misdemeanors
A number of magical items go missing and Sabrina and Daphne take on their first solo case

Book 6: Tales from the Hood
Mr Canis goes on trial for the Big Bad Wolf's crimes and the truth is to be found is in the mind of the clinically insane Red Riding Hood

Book 7: The Everafter War
Sabrina and Daphne's parents are awoken but there is no respite as reunions aren't happily ever afters and the leader of the Red Hand is finally revealed

Book 8: The Inside Story
Sabrina and Daphne pursue the Master through the bewildering pages of the Everafters' book of tales, stumbling through Oz and tale after tale in pursuit

http://sistersgrimm.com/newsite/index.html

Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Craig Hamilton, Steve Leialoha & P. Craig Russell

This is the fourth collected TPB of the DC Vertigo Fables series and it doesn't disappoint. Set in Fabletown - the neighbourhood in New York human fairy story and fable characters fled to after they were driven out of their homes by the Adversary - and The Farm - the sanctuary for the equivalent non human characters such as the three little pigs - March of the Wooden Soldiers provides some of the history of the last stand against the Adversary and Boy Blue's sadness at being on the last boat out. Then Boy Blue's old flame Red Riding Hood, lost in the last battle, returns but all is not as it seems and the Battle of Fabletown ensues, fable against the brothers of Pinocchio. Meanwhile, Prince Charming is running for Mayor of Fabletown against Old King Cole and Snow White is trying to to juggle her job as deputy mayor with her about the cub in her belly and for Bigby Wolf...

Clockwork by Philip Pullman (AUDIO)

As the narrator of this scary fairy tale says, Pullman winds up his story and lets it play and it is dark and terrifying in the great tradition of Grimm and Andersen. The people of Glockenheim gather in the White Horse Tavern to hear the young storyteller Fritz tell a ghost story. Slumped at the bar is the clockmaker's apprentice, Karl, who is due to reveal his clockwork figure for the famous town clock the next day but hasn't made it yet. But Fritz has left his story unfinished and counted on being struck by inspiration when he comes to the end. Instead, the story begins to take on a life of its own and a terrible stranger enters the inn and offers Karl his heart's desire, and his choice between right and wrong sets the story ticking on.

Pullman doesn't disappoint, a haunting short read.