Tag: prince charming

The Sisters Grimm

sisters grimmAs soon as I saw the Sisters Grimm series on the bookstore shelf, I knew I wanted to read the books. Of course, as I rarely buy books full price (I have to really really really want a book with that can’t-eat-can’t-sleep-reach-for-the-stars-over-the-fence-world-series kind of feeling to buy it full price), I passed them up and ended up adding them to my BookMooch wishlist.

A few months later I was able to mooch the first two books of the series from a friend I’d made on BookMooch, wired_lain, a Filipina based in Japan, who’s been sending me a lot of great stuff, from Japanese Harry Potters for my collection to Studio Ghibli books to little Japanese snacks (sweet potato flavored Kitkat!) and other odds and ends (including a talking calculator!)

So approximately one year later, I finally got around to reading the books: Michael Buckley’s The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy-tale Detectives (Book 1) and The Unusual Supects (Book 2) – Books #82-83 of 2009.

The Sisters Grimm series is about Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, whose parents have mysteriously disappeared. They are sent off to live with their grandmother Relda (whom they believed to be dead) in the town of Ferryport.

But things are not what they seem. The girls find out that Ferrytown – originally Fairytown – is home to the Everafters, or characters out of storybooks. Puck is their housemate, the mayor is Prince Charming, Sheriff Hamstead is one of the pigs in Three Little Pigs, their Grandmother’s friend Mr. Canis is the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White is a schoolteacher, and the Pied Piper is their principal. And the girls are actually descendants of the thread-spinners themselves, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm.

To keep the Everafters from wreaking havoc in the world, the Brothers Grimm enlisted the help of the witch Baba Yaga ang created a magical boundary that keeps the Everafters in Ferryport as long as there is a surviving member of the Grimm family living in town.

Together with their grandmother and their dog Elvis, the Grimm Sisters solve fairy tale mysteries involving Everafters and get closer to the key to their parents’ disappearance.

Here is a trailer of the series, from The Sisters Grimm website:

The books remind me of The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi because of the sibling action, except that the Grace siblings dealt with actual faeries rather than fairy tale characters. There is also a similar plotline about giants in A Giant Problem (Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles series) and The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy Tale Detectives. Both series also have lovely illustrations — Di Terlizzi in The Spiderwick Chronicles, Peter Ferguson in The Sisters Grimm — that establish the atmosphere of the stop.

Storywise, the Sisters Grimm books are fast-paced and the Shrek-like premise is engaging enough, but I’m not completely sold on the series.

First, I didn’t find the Sisters Grimm very likeable. Sabrina, 12, is too angsty for her age. Sure, they’ve been volleyed around in foster homes. Sure, their parents have been missing for 18 months. Sure they’re taken in by a crazy old woman that they’ve never seen in their lives. But she has so much anger inside her than is actually believable for a pre-teen girl that she was kind of annoying. In Book 2, I find out that the intensity of Sabrina’s emotions had a significance to the plot, but that made it even more contrived for me. I think that if her character was a bit older, she would have been more credible.

Daphne, 7, on the other hand, I find to be too cute, as in Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls. She is overly enthusiastic about their detective duties (and life in general), says things you can only describe as “precious,” and is nice to everyone except occasionally to her sister. Perhaps this is to provide a foil to Sabrina’s personality, but she’s entirely too twee for my taste.

This makes me wonder if their personalities evolve in the future.
Another thing I don’t like about the book is the vocabulary lessons sprinkled throughout the book, like when a character uses a word Daphne doesn’t understand, she has to ask what it means and it is explained to her. I find this extremely annoying because they weren’t particularly difficult words (e.g. alliance).

This “vocabulary lesson” seems to be common in children’s books these days, I also noticed this in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (which I didn’t read past the first book) and I don’t like it because it talks down to the reader and assumes the reader doesn’t know what it means. And anyway, even if the reader doesn’t know what a word means, I think that makes it too easy for them, robbing them of a more important lesson: context clues. I think with the proper context, and some creativity from the author, meaning can be more effectively (and less blatantly) established.

(And heck, when I was a kid, I would read books with a dictionary on hand to look up meanings of words I don’t understand — I distinctly remember looking up “vouchsafe” when I came across it reading the unabridged Heidi when I was seven!)

On the whole, I think the series has promise — I looked it up and there are now 7 books out in the 9-book series and it looks like more exciting things are about to happen in the next books. I do hope the characters are developed more throughout the series. While I’m not compelled to buy the books one after the other (hopefully I can mooch them), I do want to know what happens next in this series.

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M y copy: trade paperbacks, mooched from Japan

My rating: The Sisters Grimm: Fairy Tale Detectives 3/5 stars; The Sisters Grimm: The Unusual Suspects, 3/5 stars

Be careful what you wish for…


The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Book #12 for 2009
Euro Book #2 for FFP Diversity Challenge

In Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear, one of the subplots is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s only novel — The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it definitely got me curious.

Then I came across the Viking Whole Story edition at a Book Sale branch – illustrated by Tony Ross (of Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry series) in addition to the pictorial annotations on the story’s historical, cultural, social, geographical, artistic, and scientific context. I had to pass on it because it cost nearly P400, but it was one of the first books I mooched on BookMooch, and I had to wait a couple of months for it because I had to angel mooch it from the US, etc., etc.

I always thought it was a Faustian novel in the literal sense. You know, the “pact with the devil” type of thing, like in Bedazzled or in Shortcut to Happiness or I was a Teenage Faust (LOL, I think I saw that one thrice).

The young Dorian Gray, after sitting for a painting, realizes (after Harry eggs him on) he’ll never be as beautiful, and utters a wish for eternal youth and beauty — that the painting would take all the beatings of time and age instead of having them on his person. And then it just happens – he has indirectly traded his soul for the luxury of eternal youth.

At 260+ pages and 20 chapters, I thought it would be an easy read, but as I settled into reading, I soon got bogged down by the various ideologies Oscar Wilde was espousing.

It’s the confluence of Wilde’s philosophical statements that to a degree obscure the otherwise simple storyline. As a homosexual living in Victorian times, Wilde clearly had his issues.

First was his overarching philosophy on art, leaning towards aestheticism, or “art for art’s sake.” Wilde even writes a
lengthy preface to explain his perspective,that art should have no other purpose than being beautiful, which offended sensibilities in a time when art was used as a tool for education and moral guidance.

Wilde proclaims this philosophy every chance he gets within the novel but still ends up contradicting himself, as his story is a cautionary tale of what could happen when the lines between life and art are blurred, and the high price to pay (in Dorian’s case, his soul) to achieve beauty.

Aside from that, Wilde also makes a social commentary on how superficial his circle was, and how people were often judged by their physical appearance (e.g. Dorian was the picture of purity and innocence, ergo no one believed he could’ve done the black deeds he was rumored to have done).

He also warns of the negative effects of influence, whether direct (as in the case of Lord Henry Wotton) or indirect (via the yellow book), and emphasizes the need for individualism and thinking on your own.

Finally, it is pretty hard to miss the homoeroticism in this book, as from the first chapter, it is clear that there was a love triangle of sorts between Basil Hallward, Dorian Gray, and Harry Wotton, and he wanted to justify homosexuality in the novel.

It was really love— it had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself

Wilde believed that homosexuality was not unnatural and was an indication of refined culture, as in the tradition of other great men. In the biography included in the book, it states that Wilde was tried for sodomy.

It is obvious too, that Wilde did not care much for women, as the novel is highly misogynistic — all the women characters are silly and underdeveloped. In fairness though, Sybil Vane is effective in establishing the ill effects of placing vanity above virtue.

While Wilde was a major proponent of aestheticism as he struggled to free himself and his work from the confines of Victorian society, he also wanted to push his own doctrines, and that was what made the novel as confusing as it was.

Ideologies aside, I liked the novel for its original plot and the final twist (which I don’t want to spoil for anyone). Faustian themes are always fun to read, and I looked forward to the times Dorian would inspect the painting for changes

I also enjoyed The Whole Story edition of the book for Tony Ross’s comical illustrations, as well as the collection of images that explained a lot of the novel’s context, although I think the layout could still be improved, as it was distracting at times.

Took me a while to digest it, but I’m glad I read the book — I just googled for film versions and there is a Dorian Gray movie coming out this year, and it promises to be a good adaptation, judging from the cast: Colin Firth as Lord Henry Wotton (rats, he’s always doing gay roles now); Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) as Dorian Gray; and Rachel Hurd-Wood (from Perfume) as Sybil Vane. It’s a British production; I do hope they show it here.

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My copy: full color paperback, mooched from the US

My rating: 4/5 stars