What if fairy tales and legends weren't just stories? Elizabeth finds out firsthand when she takes an after-school job at an unusual lending library in New York City. The library houses the mysterious Grimm collection, which contains, among other magical objects, Cinderella's slippers, magic carpets, and Puss's boots. The adventure begins when objects start to go missing, and Elizabeth and her new friends take it upon themselves to track down the thief and preserve the magic before others steal items and use them for evil. The bizarre escapades that the group gets in will have young reader's hearts pounding and begging for more. Romantic intrigue also ensues as the friends find themselves turning to each other for support. Julia Whelan does a masterful job of switching between characters and conveying their youthful tones and excitement. VERDICT For young fans of fairy tales and fantasy. Both boys and girls will get into the action, adventure, humor, and fairy tale intrigue.-Erin Cataldi, Franklin Coll. Lib., IN (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Is there a better antidote to a lonely teen existence than a dose of fairy-tale magic? Elizabeth has yet to make friends at her tony Manhattan private school, and she feels equally alone at home with her remote father and taskmaster stepmother. Then Elizabeth's teacher recommends her for a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository, and as Elizabeth befriends the other pages, she begins to learn that fairy tales aren't just fantasy and that many of the special collections' artifacts belong to her favorite childhood stories, including the magic mirror from Snow White. Just as Elizabeth learns about the repository's impossible wonders, some of the most powerful objects, and then some of the pages, disappear, and she finds herself leading the dangerous rescue. Captivating magic fills the pages of this exciting new novel from the author of Enthusiasm (2006). The story occasionally loses momentum, but action fans will find plenty of heart-pounding, fantastical escapades as the novel builds to its satisfying, romantic conclusion. A richly imagined adventure with easy appeal for Harry Potter fans.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2010 Booklist

When Elizabeth takes a job as a page at the New-York Circulating Material Repository, a lending library for objects instead of books, she's let in on the repository's secret. Housed in the basement is the Grimm Collection, an assortment of items such as seven-league boots and spinning wheels that are normally found in fairy tales-amazingly, the items (and the magic) are real. But someone's been removing the materials and replacing them with nonmagical replicas, and Elizabeth doesn't know which of her fellow pages to trust: Marc, the handsome basketball star who's been taking liberties with his borrowing privileges; Anjali, who has all the male pages at her feet; or sullen Aaron, who resents the others' looks and good fortune. Tracking down the thief will take all four of them on a dangerous quest, where they will need their wits and the objects in the collection to succeed. Shulman combines down-to-earth teens concerned with fitting in with a wonderfully occult magical world-the repository itself, with its stained-glass windows, miles of stacks, and pneumatic tubes for routing call slips, permeates the story with its musty, mysterious presence. The pages must figure out how to work with objects that sometimes function in tricky ways (the magic mirror, for instance, tells the truth but in the most slanted and unflattering manner possible). But just as in a fairy tale, Elizabeth's good choices and kind heart allow the story to spin out to a happy conclusion. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

WHEN I was 10, I found an ancient collection of Grimm fairy tales in the basement. I cracked the dusty black cover, not expecting much (I knew Cinderella and Snow White and their stupid hair and trilling voices from movies I'd outgrown) and was transfixed. These stories were sick, serious and bloody. Cinderella's sisters did what to their feet? I sat on that cold basement floor and read the entire thick volume (a 1920 version, with sinuous Art Deco illustrations by Elenore Abbott). I felt both thrilled and duped - why had no one told me that fairy tales were creepily delicious? The appeal wasn't just the gross-out factor, of course; it's that fairy tales are about transformation. Someone powerless becomes a hero; boundaries are crossed and identities are altered. There's magic and trickery and cunning. Often the protagonist gets help from unexpected, seemingly humble, places. The bad guys are really bad - rich and greedy, generally murderous, perpetually trying to hog all the magic. Stripped of layers of Hollywood cuteness, these are elemental tales of danger and justice. In recent years there's been a boomlet in middle-grade and young adult novels based on the Grimm Brothers' tales: Michael Buckley's "Sisters Grimm" series; Malinda Lo's "Ash" (a lesbian retelling of "Cinderella"); Jackson Pearce's "Sisters Red" (a werewolf-hunting revamp of "Little Red Riding Hood") and many more. I suspect this is a reaction to how constrained many children's lives have become. Stuck in manicured suburbs and cooped up after school in cities, today's middle-class kids are marched from one résumé-building activity to another, hermetically sealed in peanut-free bubbles. Fairy tales, with their mystery and violence and free-range, underparented children, may seem particularly enticing to today's tweens and teenagers. Which doesn't mean all retellings will appeal to all young readers, of course. "Reckless," by Cornelia Funke, may please fans of traditional fantasy novels but doesn't seem likely to slip the surly bonds of genre. In self-consciously poetic prose it tells the story of Jacob Reckless, a rather unlikable young man who ditches his real-world family (as his father did before him) for adventures in the Mirrorworld. When Jacob's younger brother, Will, follows him through the mirror, bad things happen. Will is cursed by a Dark Fairy and begins metamorphosing into a Goyl, a warlike stone creature. Jacob has to stop being so darn self-absorbed and save Will, with the help of Will's girlfriend, Clara, and Jacob's traveling companion, Fox, who is a fox, except when she isn't. Funke's descriptions of the veins of stone creeping across Will's face and body are nifty, as are the snippets of fairy tale imagery. (Jacob brushes past Sleeping Beauty, unkissed and undiscovered, lying in a dusty, rosebush-choked castle, her gown yellowing and her skin becoming thin as parchment.) But reading "Reckless" is like hacking through thorns. We're plunked into a teeming fairy tale world with too many undifferentiated characters coming at us. The writing is often stilted ("Smoke from countless coal furnaces blackened the windows and the walls, and the cold autumn air certainly did not smell of damp leaves, even though the Dwarfs' sewer system was vastly superior to that of the Empress" - wait, what?). Funke is also fond of sentence fragments. ("Girl. Woman. So much more vulnerable. Strong and yet weak. A heart that knew no armor." Sounds like. William Shatner. As. Captain Kirk.) But the story picks up steam, and I found myself hoping that the inevitable sequel would focus on the intriguing Fox. (Be forewarned: the publisher says the book is for "10 and up" readers, but I'd call it Y.A. Seduction is used as a bargaining chip, and there's a character called the Tailor who is about as terrifying as anything in the "Saw" movies.) Way less grim is "The Grimm Legacy" by Polly Shulman, a fizzy confection that takes the story of Cinderella as its starting point. Put-upon Elizabeth is a mensch (we know this because she gives her gym shoes to a homeless woman on Page 1). Her mom has died, and her dad has remarried a shallow narcissist. What with the cost of her stepsisters' college tuition and all, Elizabeth has to give up her expensive school and is either bullied or ignored in her new one. But noting that Elizabeth is "hardworking and warmhearted, with an independent mind," her teacher gets her a job as a page at the New-York Circulating Material Repository. The repository is a sort of library dating from the 18th century, now housed in a brownstone near Central Park that's mysteriously bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, with glorious Tiffany windows that . . . well, surely the images in the windows aren't moving? The collection contains a variety of magical objects from the Grimms' tales - seven-league boots, spindles, straw, a golden egg, a spiteful mirror. (And, entertainingly, everything has a Dewey decimal number.) But someone is stealing the magic, and Elizabeth and the other pages must figure out what's going on - despite the fact that they don't know which adults they can trust. The story buzzes along at a delightful clip, and though the narrative falls apart a bit toward the end, it's a fun ride. "A Tale Dark & Grimm," by Adam Gidwitz, is something else entirely. In fact, it's unlike any children's book I've ever read. If "Reckless" is an old-school fairy tale fantasy, and "The Grimm Legacy" is a modern one, "A Tale Dark & Grimm" is a completely postmodern creation. It plunks Hansel and Gretel into a succession of other, lesser-known Grimm tales - "Faithful Johannes," "The Three Golden Hairs," "Brother and Sister" and more - but creates a narrative through-line that wends through all the tales like a trail of bread crumbs. Parents do horrible things; they fail their children, and they kill them. But Hansel and Gretel become true heroes - they go on a quest; they save others; they come home; they learn to understand their parents' burdens and failings. Heavy. And yet "A Tale Dark & Grimm" is really, really funny. The first line is "Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome." THE tone ricochets between lyrical and goofy. There's an intrusive, Snicket-y narrator who warns the reader every time gore is imminent, apologizing, urging the reader to hustle the little kids out of the room. And it all works. As the story progresses, it gets less and less faithful to the source material and becomes its own increasingly rich and strange thing. A Child's Garden of Metafiction! It reminds me of Eudora Welty's "Robber Bridegroom," in which bits of fairy tales, myths, legends and Southern folklore are stitched together into a marvelous new . . . something. My 8-year-old daughter, a tough critic who doesn't like scary books, read "A Tale Dark & Grimm" three times, back to back. She was enchanted, not terrified. And no wonder. "A Tale Dark & Grimm" holds up to multiple rereadings, like the classic I think it will turn out to be. In 'A Tale Dark & Grimm,' the narrator urges us to hustle the little kids out of the room. Marjorie Ingall is a columnist for Tablet magazine.

Gr 6-9-Feeling left out from her stepfamily at home and from her classmates at her new school, Elizabeth is delighted when she gets a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository, a library that loans objects of historical value. She's particularly intrigued when she's given access to the Grimm Collection, a secret room that holds magical objects from the Brothers' tales, e.g., seven-league boots, a mermaid's comb, and the sinister mirror from "Snow White." However, when the items start to disappear, she and her fellow pages embark on a dangerous quest to catch the thief, only to find themselves among the suspects. This modern fantasy has intrigue, adventure, and romance, and the magical aspects of the tale are both clever and intricately woven, from rhyming charms to flying-carpet rides. The author brings the seemingly disparate elements together in the end, while still making certain that her protagonist's problems are not completely solved by the world of magic. Shulman's prose is fast paced, filled with humor, and peopled with characters who are either true to life or delightfully bizarre. Fans of fairy tales in general and Grimm stories in particular will delight in the author's frequent literary references, and fantasy lovers will feel very much at home in this tale that pulls out all the stops.-Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, formerly at LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Shulman (Enthusiasm) intermingles classic fairy tale elements and modern-day conflicts in this clever novel set in New York City. The story begins when teenager Elizabeth Rew lands a plum part-time job, working as a page in the "New-York Circulating Material Repository," an institution housing rare objects to be lent to an exclusive circle of patrons. The most secret and by far most interesting section of the building is the basement, where magic objects mentioned in the Grimm Brothers' tales are stored. Much to the librarians' dismay, however, some of these valuable items go missing. With the help of her fellow pages, Elizabeth gets to the bottom of the mystery, but catching the thief poses enormous danger and necessitates the aid of some powerful equipment, including Snow White's mirror, a pair of winged sandals, and a magical golden key. Mixing tongue-in-cheek humor (like the magic mirror's blunt appraisal of Elizabeth's beauty: "Bitsy Rew is brave and true./ A pity she's not pretty too") with suspense, Shulman conjures an enticing slice of magic realism that fairy tale buffs should relish. Ages 10-up. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Fairy-tale and romance devotees, museum aficionados and budding librarians will pine for Elizabeth's afterschool job. Lonely in New York City, her family straight out of Grimm (dead mom, inattentive dad, cold stepfamily), Elizabeth agrees to work at the New-York Circulating Material Repository. She passes the button-sorting interview and begins work in the stacks, where call slips arrive via pneumatic tubes. The Repository houses historical articles (textiles, wigs, tea sets), including the Grimm Collection, all circulating. Shulman's prose sparkles describing the Grimm objects' magic powers (recognizable from tales) and the profound deposits required to borrow them (a "long, translucent, sweater-shaped thing" is "somebody's sense of privacy"; a future firstborn looks "infinitely vulnerable and undefined, like a thought before you put it into words"). The pages are a multiracial group, but the white librarians unfortunately romanticize the Akan peoples, constantly spouting proverbs from those "great men and women. Chiefs in Africa." Some structural implausibility pales before vivid sensory descriptions (hexed gingerbread tastes "[s]weet and dark, like roast duck or cedar pencils") and delightful magical happenings both thrilling and nefarious. (Fantasy. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.