Thursday, April 04, 2013

The Grimm Legacy

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman
Read:  2013

This book is not only about fairy tales, but it is a fairy tale in its own right.  Elizabeth's best friend has moved across the country to California. Her father has married her new stepmother, complete with two new stepsisters. With all of the new expenses needed for her stepsisters and their college educations, Elizabeth is forced to leave her beloved school and give up her dance lessons. Things are pretty bleak in her life.

She hasn't made any friends yet, but on the plus side, she does have a teacher that she really likes. Things start looking up when he gives her a referral for a part-time job as a page at the New York Circulating Material Repository, which is a library that loans out things, not just books.  They have china and costumes and works of art and, well, just about anything you can imagine.  Actually, as Elizabeth finds out, they have a lot more than you can imagine.

Elizabeth is amazed at the size of the collection and begins to make friends with her coworkers.  But, there are a lot of rumors swirling around about pages caught stealing and even one who disappeared. She promises her superiors that she'll keep an eye out for anything strange, but little did she know, when she made that promise that there was so much strange to be had around there. Between the odd patrons and the behaviors of the employees at the NYCMR, she's kind of surrounded by the strange.  And then, she finds out about the Grimm collection, a special room filled with enchanted objects from fairy tales.  Snow White's stepmother's mirror, a mermaid's comb, Aladdin's magic carpet, etc. are all there. The funny thing is, some of them appear to be fakes.  Someone is stealing the magical pieces and replacing them with fakes.    
Not knowing who to trust, Elizabeth and her fellow pages set out to solve the mystery of the missing Grimm items.

This book got very mixed reviews on Goodreads.  No matter what anyone else thinks about it, I enjoyed it.  Elizabeth is very likable and so are her new friends, the children and the adults. It looks like this is part of a series and I look forward to seeing what Shulman has in store for Elizabeth and her readers.


As a bonus, I found a book trailer for you to enjoy.    

1 comment:

ChapterHouse-Reads said...

I loved this book, It was perfect blend of magic and mystery!
The most striking part of the novel was its originality . The whole idea of depositing your "sense o direction" was brilliant!