Editorial Review:

The stories collected by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm in the early 19th century reflected life as known to the German people of the time - fantastic, yet often unpredictable & pernicious. Patriotic folklorists, they began their collection of tales with the intent of preserving the endangered German oral tradition from a Napoleonic rule intent on suppressing local culture.

From their earliest release & translation, conservative parents & ecclesiastics disparaged the tales for their vestigial, raw, Gothic content & the brothers & a myriad of editors began to soften them to demure morality & sweetness to make appeal to the upper classes what began as earthy peasant fare. This is no such revision, sanitized of objectionable material; these are the grimmest.

The tales themselves are only part of the story of this volume, which is lushly illustrated with almost a hundred pieces from contemporary artists Terry Beal, Benchacco, Jon Ferril, Luc Hebert, Kelly Levy, Kathryn McLaughlin, Karen Petroff, Katy Rose & Cyrus Rua which perfectly complement the translations, lending movement and reality to the stories, transcending and transforming what most would think of as mere faerie tales.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Artistic, Masterful Portrayal of Original Text:

Artistically presented and masterfully portrayed, the Grimmest of Grimm stays true to the original text and intent of the tales of the Brothers Grimm.
As another reviewer states, yes, the text is large, and there is white space throughout the layout, but that is part of the artistic portrayal of these wonderful stories.
By translating the tales from the original language and presenting them as they were originally written (without the watered-down "Disney fairy tale" endings and redacted grim... more info

Almost a book:

This is not so much a book as a puffed up leaflet. The text is huge, and the pages are filled with what appear to be doodles done by bored ninth graders. There is no discussion or context. It is a tiny collection stories and nothing more. Shrink its margins and text to more normal size, cut the art, Cut back on white space and you ind yourself looking at maybe twenty pages. I'm being giving when I say that.

imaginative and rich:

A great collection that takes the stories in unexpected directions. Loved the artwork and the weird takes.

"Fairy-stories are not necessrily for children":

When I was a kid, I had that rather dog-eared, whitish book, with lots of fairy-tales and almost no illustrations. Yet I loved it, as I did the tales of The Grimm brothers.
Then I grew up, went to University and little by little, the name Grimm no longer reminded me of pretty maidens, kept in tall towers by ugly old witches or of handsome princes, coming to rescue them (or rather sneak into the maidens' room;)), but of language origins, Germanic sound shifts and linguistics.
And then I chanced to... more info

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