Book Review: The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman is a children's book perfect for the middle grade set. Elizabeth's father is distant and her step mother and sisters are less than ideal. Elizabeth also has to change schools and her best friend moves away, leaving her feeling a little lost. When a teacher recommends Elizabeth for a job at a unusual library which lends objects rather than books, she finds herself making new friends and discovering the magic from her beloved fairy tales is real. Missing objects, whispered secrets, and magic lead Elizabeth on a dangerous quest.

The Grimm Legacy takes a young girl caught up in her own fairy tale like life, pre-prince, and drops her into a world she has been wishing for. The secrets of the library are just the thing to distract and challenge Elizabeth, and introduces her to like minded characters of her own age. The adventures and objects, and of course the library's holdings, and intriguing and captured my imagination. I loved the idea that  objects, from all kinds of literature, are safely stored somewhere. The magic and references to stories, including some lesser known tales, had the fairy tale geek in me enthralled.

The only thing I could ask for here is more character building. The majority of characters seem a little flat, and could have been better built, going past the obvious stereo types that some of them slipped into in my mind because there was nothing to lead them into any other direction. I also felt that the romance aspects of the story were not really needed, just added a little more distrust between the characters that might have had more adventures together is only they could all talk and act together without suspicion. There was little to no character growth, even with Elizabeth, which bothered me.

I recommend The Grimm Legacy to readers ten and older. Readers that enjoy fairy tales, libraries, magic, and stories that are about any of these things will enjoy the story. Readers that need to really know the characters to enjoy a story will find themselves disappointed here, but fairy tale fans should still give it a read.