The Grimm Legacy is a unique, satisfying novel—a fairy tale within a fairy tale, with all the classic handsome princes and lovely princesses, wicked wizards and witches and wondrous magical objects. However, none of these things (barring the magic mirrors and mermaid combs) take center stage as they do in the original tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. This is no classic story of elves and wishing wells: it follows the path of a clever girl with no sense of direction (literally), and crosses blades with a sarcastic, deeply jealous boy who has mood swings like a pendulum.
Once upon a time, in modern New York City, a high school student named Elizabeth helps a homeless woman, tipping the first domino into the next—and only the person who set the dominoes up in the first place knows where this snaking line will end. Offered a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository, which lends not books but objects, Elizabeth dives into a world where the magical items featured in the Grimm fairy tales are not fiction but fact. Unfortunately, she chose the wrong time to be privy to this information: pieces are being stolen—and co-workers at the Repository are going missing. With no one to trust—not even each other—Elizabeth and a select group of fellow workers reluctantly team together: not only to find their friends and the missing magical artifacts, but also to prove their own innocence.
Polly Shulman artfully captures the attention and imagination, her descriptions of the Repository making you wish that you were wandering down the corridors in body as well as mind: that you could open up a filing cabinet and see anything from carefully labeled silver spoons to an invisibility cloak—though in fact it’s unlikely you would actually see the cloak.
As with any well-written book, The Grimm Legacy transcends the last page and leaves you pondering characters and plots long after it has been returned to our own Circulating Material Repository, the Lanpher Memorial Library.
Once upon a time, in modern New York City, a high school student named Elizabeth helps a homeless woman, tipping the first domino into the next—and only the person who set the dominoes up in the first place knows where this snaking line will end. Offered a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository, which lends not books but objects, Elizabeth dives into a world where the magical items featured in the Grimm fairy tales are not fiction but fact. Unfortunately, she chose the wrong time to be privy to this information: pieces are being stolen—and co-workers at the Repository are going missing. With no one to trust—not even each other—Elizabeth and a select group of fellow workers reluctantly team together: not only to find their friends and the missing magical artifacts, but also to prove their own innocence.
Polly Shulman artfully captures the attention and imagination, her descriptions of the Repository making you wish that you were wandering down the corridors in body as well as mind: that you could open up a filing cabinet and see anything from carefully labeled silver spoons to an invisibility cloak—though in fact it’s unlikely you would actually see the cloak.
As with any well-written book, The Grimm Legacy transcends the last page and leaves you pondering characters and plots long after it has been returned to our own Circulating Material Repository, the Lanpher Memorial Library.