Every now and then I discover that I am wildly ignorant even of the small corners of culture that I think I’m familiar with. Evidently the Sisters Grimm series of books is extremely popular, up to a million books now with another million due to be published this summer, and probably a movie or two as well. When I picked up The Fairy-Tale Detectives, I thought it was newish, one of those attempts at a popular series that never quite made it. Wrong, I was.
Which is too bad, because this book stinks on ice.
So, one of my Sources of Reader Irritation is when Our Hero is too damned stupid to breathe. There’s the plot, and there’s Our Hero, racing off in the wrong direction, and the reader, who I should point out is me, saying that’s just dumb! It’s one thing if Our Hero is tricked along with me, or if Our Hero is smart but still unable to figure out what’s going on because he’s not quite smart enough. But in a story like this, where the clues are practically jumping up and down saying "Take me! Take me! I’m yours!" the utter inability of Our Hero to get a clue makes me grumpy.
This is a bit of a problem for children’s stories in general, since children are often not sophisticated enough to suspect that the butler did it, or that a grumpy character may turn out to be a Good Guy. On the other hand, children ain’t stupid.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
THIS IS SO GOOD AND NICE STORY