More Grimm tales await in the harrowing, hilarious companion to a beloved new classic Take caution ahead-- Oversize plant life, eerie amphibious royalty, and fear-inducing creatures abound. Lest you enter with dread. Follow Jack and Jill as they enter startling new landscapes that may (or may not) be scary, bloody, terrifying, and altogether true. Step lively, dear reader . . . Happily ever after isn't cutting it anymore. In this companion novel to Adam Gidwitz's widely acclaimed, award-winning debut, A Tale Dark & Grimm , Jack and Jill explore a new set of tales from the Brothers Grimm and others, including Jack and the Beanstalk and The Frog Prince. Gr 3 Up-Gidwitz is back with a second book that, if possible, outshines A Tale Dark & Grimm (Dutton, 2010). Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, cousins Jack and Jill have had a particularly tough day. Jack has a mean-boy problem: he's bullied and tortured by a clique whom he hero-worships. Jill has a mirror-obsessed, pettily cruel mother who lets her daughter walk naked, unaware, in front of the entire kingdom. But our woe-ridden hero and heroine are in for far worse: a skyscraping beanstalk, a fratlike group of giants, a deadly mermaid, and an oversize fire-breathing salamander show up before these brave, loving, and realistically flawed children get their happily ever after. This book, like the first, features a bold-font "storyteller" who introduces, explains, and comments on the story as it unfolds-usually with alacrity as he promises gore in the pages ahead, but with a fair dose of true insight into the characters and what makes them, like us, human. However, the chapters derive only loosely from fairy tales; they are mostly Gidwitz's inventions, which allows the character and story arcs to congeal into a satisfying whole. Most delightfully, that snarky, insightful narrator reminds us that stories were once verbal, communal experiences. This book begs to be read aloud, preferably to children who delight equally in hearing about pools of vomit and blood and about triumphant heroes.-Allison Bruce, The Children's Storefront, New York Cityα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. Accolades for A Tale Dark & Grimm : • New York Times bestseller • Selection on the Today Show’s Al’s Book Club for Kids • NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts Selection • An E. B. White Read Aloud Honor Book • New York Times Editors’ Choice pick • Publishers Weekly Flying Start • School Library Journal Best Book of the Year • ALA Notable Book   “Unlike any children’s book I’ve ever read . . . [it] holds up to multiple re-readings, like the classic I think it will turn out to be.”— New York Times Book Review “A marvelous reworking of old stories that manages to be fresh, frightening, funny, and humane.”— Wall Street Journal Accolades for In a Glass Grimmly : • New York Times bestseller • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 • A School Librry Journal Best Book of 2012    “Gidwitz is back with a second book that, if possible, outshines A Tale Dark & Grimm .”— School Library Journal , starred review    “Compulsively readable.”— Kirkus Reviews , starred review   “Gory, hilarious, touching, and lyrical all at once, with tons of kid appeal.”— The Horn Book   “Adam Gidwitz leads us into creepy forests, gruesome deeds, terrible monsters, and—far worse—the dark places of the human heart. It’s horrible . . . and I LOVED it!”—Tom Angleberger, author of The Strange Case of Origami  Adam Gidwitz taught in Brooklyn for eight years. Now, he writes full time—which means he writes a couple of hours a day, and lies on his couch staring at the ceiling the rest of the time. As is the case with all of his books, everything in them not only happened in the real fairy tales…it all also happened to him. Really. Learn more at www.adamgidwitz.com, on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter: @AdamGidwitz Fairy tales were, in a word, horrible. Two hundred years ago, in Germany, the Brothers Grimm first wrote down that version of Cinderella in which the stepsisters slice off pieces of their feet and get their eyes pecked out. In England, a man names Joseph Jacobs collected tales like Jack the Giant Killer, which is about a boy named Jack who goes around murdering giants in the most gruesome and grotesque ways imaginable. And there was this guy called Hans Christian Andersen, who lived in Denmark and wrote fairy tales filled with sadness and humiliation and loneliness. Even Mother Goose’s rhymes could get pretty dark—after all, Jack and Jill go up a hill, and then Jack falls down and breaks his head open. Yes, fairy tales were horrible. In the original sense of the word. But even these horrible fairy tales and nursery rhymes aren’t true. They’re just stories. Right? Not exactly.