Grimm Legacy

The Grimm Legacy Polly Shulman

After writing a paper on the Grimms for history class, Elizabeth gets a job as a page at the New York Circulating Repository Library. This library circulates objects instead of books-- Elizabethan clothing or Marie Antoinette's wig. It's an odd assortment of collections, but what's really interesting are the special collections on the lowest level. There lies the Grimm collection-- with the magic mirror from Snow White, mermaid combs, seven league boots, or twelve sets of worn out dancing slippers.*

The problem is that many magical items have recently been flat-out stolen or replaced with fakes. A large bird is stalking users and employees of the Repository. When suspicion starts to fall on the pages (although the pages themselves are starting to go missing) Elizabeth and her new friends are out to uncover the mystery because it becomes deadly.

I loved the library and the mystery. I liked Elizabeth's friendship with Anjali and while I found Aaron's jealousy of Marc a bit annoying (especially how it spilled over into everything Aaron did) I liked that it was there. If that makes sense. I liked the real-world applications of many of the fairy tale items (using seven league boots to get from school to work to day care to pick up your brother? Excellent!)

I also really liked how Elizabeth had an distant father and a horrible step-family, but it didn't play up the Cinderella parallels. It was more there to provide context as to why she was so gung-ho about her job (before discovering the Grimm collection, I mean, once you discover that, that's enough reason to spend all your time at work, right?)

It's a great adventure with a bit of romance, an awesome little sister, and a lot of magic. Very much love.



*It's also where you have such things as the Wells collection (shrink rays and time machines) The Gibson Chrestomathy (computer viruses, artificial intelligence) and the Lovecraft Corpus (it's just bad news. Don't go there.)

Oh, a note on tags. Usually if something is "YA" or "Juvenile" I just tag it with where it's shelved at the library I work at. Many libraries have this in the kid's section. SLJ and Booklist both list this as Grades 6-9, which I very much agree with, so I'm tagging it YA, even though that's not where any of my local libraries shelve it. Not that it's inappropriate for kids (there's some kissing) but the main characters are all in high school and I think it'll just appeal more to the younger end of YA, rather than the older end of J.

Book Provided by... my local library

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