Books like Godfather Death
By Sally Nicholls
For families who don't shy away from big, eerie questions, this is a Grimm tale told with the gravity and strangeness it deserves. Haunting, folkloric, and quietly unsettling, with a fairy-tale hush that never turns cute.
A miller's daughter is locked in a room and ordered to spin straw into gold, so a strange little man appears offering to do it for her — in exchange for a price that grows more dangerous with each visit.
An elderly woman despises the night so fiercely she tries to destroy it — burning it, drowning it, even feeding it to her hounds — in a battle she cannot win.
A rich king who prizes gold above all else is granted his wish that everything he touches turns to gold — until he accidentally touches his own daughter.
A young boy left waiting at home turns his father's odd remark, "Things are going to change around here," into an anxious spiral of imagined transformations all around him.
A witch famous throughout Russia for eating children is secretly a lonely old woman who longs for a grandchild, so she disguises herself as a village babushka to find one.
A father is proud of both his daughters, but when the Great King summons the most worthy young women in the land to appear before him, only one can become queen.
A girl named Mei Mei breaks her ama's favorite cup and, terrified of the consequences, lets the family cat take the blame — until the guilt becomes impossible to bear.
A poor woodcutter's two children, abandoned in the forest, discover a house made of bread, cakes, and candy — and the wicked witch who lives there has a taste for children.
Cursed bald at birth by the wicked fairy Malevola, a princess grows up and wishes for golden hair — only to find that too much hair brings its own troubles.
A young donkey finds a magic pebble that grants wishes, but a panicked wish during a scary encounter with a lion turns him into a rock — with no way to wish himself back.
After spotting three dazzling mermaids on the subway, a boy transforms his home into a lagoon of imagination, fashioning his own mermaid costume from a curtain and some ferns.
A curious child finds a key to a door that's been shut for ages, and stepping through it turns a gray, drab world into something vivid, strange, and alive with possibility.
