So you want read a nice, pleasant story with a happy ending to your daughter as she drifts off to sleep? Let’s see what offered up in Grimm’s Grimmest… Hmmm… There’s the story of the woman who decapitates her stepson, chops up his corpse, and cooks him up in a stew for her husband (“Juniper Tree”) … Oh, that’s terribly appalling, isn’t it? Let’s try again… Here’s good one: this one tells how Rapunzel’s suitor is blinded when sharp thorns pierce his eyes … Is your daughter sleeping well yet? No, I doubt she is. These are not stories that me wee Gram would have read aloud to me before tucking me into bed!
Welcome to the uncensored tales that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected some one hundred and seventy years ago. What we have come to believe are the true tales collected by the Brothers Grimm (and how terribly appropriate their family name is) are but sanitized versions of the grisly tales they collected. Grimm’s Grimmest serves up tales that you won’t want to tell your daughter if you want her to sleep tonight. But these are tales that any adult interested in the folk process should read. Just keep the light burning brightly by your side as you read them — and watch out for the things that move in the dark corners of your room.
Kidnappings, beheadings, gruesome murders, cruel and drawn-out punishments, and violent revenges for slights both real and only perceived by those who are more than slightly mad: all of these are here as first collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. From the awful horror of Aschebputtel (the very first Cinderella) to stories so grim (no pun intended) that I won’t describe them here lest you turn grey, here be the true versions created long ago in a Europe more savage and dark than we want to admit existed.
One final note: the illustrations of Tracy Dockray add a macabre touch to Grimm’s Grimmest. (Quite a change from her work on Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Series and The Mouse and the Motorcycle Series!) And as a collector of crow tales I particularly enjoyed her illustration of “The Crows.”
(Chronicle Books, 1997)
