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Grim.
Grimmer.
Grimace.
Welcome to a very special episode of Grim Grimmer Grimmest, where I'm going to be talking to somebody I have admired for a while and a new friend of mine, Liz Gutaco, who is a children's librarian and also an author.
And she does what I do, which is she tells crazy, messed up fairy tales.
She does it for grown-ups, and I do it for kids and for grown-ups.
But for grown-ups out there, and only grown-ups.
She has a great new book of these crazy fairy tales.
You should totally go look it up.
Liz Gutaco is her name.
And also has a really fun social media feed.
Social media presence.
That's at Cosbrarian, where she tells these hilarious fairy tales.
But very much for grown-ups.
But I know she can talk to kids because, Liz, you are also a children's librarian.
Is that right?
I am.
I've been a children's librarian for about 15 years and it's the best job ever.
It is amazing when your book got sent to me in the mail by your very savvy publisher, who was like I think you would like this.
And I was like, oh, my gosh, I had a sister and I didn't know I had a sister.
So it's exciting to be to be talking to you right now.
It's very true.
And during the process of writing my own book there.
At one point Tom was like do you know A Tale Dark and Grim?
And I was like, do I know A Tale Dark and Grim?
I'm a children's librarian who loves Weird Fairy Tales.
What do you think the answer is?
And so you know, and that was a great inspiration to to kind of think about my book being like a grown up cynical version of yourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a good description of it.
But you still appreciate them, right?
Oh, I love them.
You're cynical about them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, how did you first fall in love with weird fairy tales?
How did you first discover them?
Well, I was the perfect age when Disney's The Little Mermaid, the original, came out.
And that became my entire personality.
Like anytime I was in a body of water, you know, I was like, I'm a mermaid now.
If I was on a rock, I'm like thrusting myself up in the air and the waves crashing behind me, of course,
And it's really I'm just sitting on the beach and my mother's like, Elizabeth, what are you doing?
And so my mother, who is like, it will take any opportunity to make an interest a bookish interest.
And my mother, she gave me a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's tales.
And she was like, you should read what happened in the old one.
And it did.
And I was like, oh, no.
But also for the kids, for the kids out there who don't know, and adults a lot of adults don't know what happens in the real Little Mermaid.
It's a much more difficult process for the Little Mermaid, who does not have a name, as your listeners will be familiar with.
This is a common thing in fairy tales.
She's just the Little Mermaid.
She also doesn't have a crab friend.
No crab friend.
No Scuttle.
Scuttle's my favorite Disney character of all time.
So that was a shock to read.
She is obsessed with humans, with human life.
She has a grandmother, a wonderful grandmother character in that version, who tells her all about humans and how the only way to become human is to marry a human.
And so you know Ariel, she kind of sets out more with the idea of becoming human than like marrying a prince.
And luckily she meets a prince who's handsome and he seems to like her, although not great.
He's not a great guy.
And unfortunately though, like for her, whereas Ariel gets to experience all this wonder and joy and like seeing human life, it's very hard for the little mermaid in the old version to become a human.
It hurts her to walk on her legs.
And the prince likes her, but he doesn't really like her.
And so she has a sad ending.
It's she doesn't end up with the prince.
He marries someone else and she, because of this deal, she's made of the sea witch, something you should never do, i don't recommend.
Uh, she has to become part of the sea foam.
She can't even go back to being a mermaid again.
She does have a little upside that, like she kind of like joins these beautiful angels who take care of the earth and that gets her this immortal soul she's been really wanting And do I remember correctly that – so when she becomes Seafoam and then she gets to join these angels after 300 years.
Yes.
Isn't it specified?
Yes.
She hasn't suffered enough yet.
She has to go around the world for 300 years.
And not only that.
Actually, it's not even that easy, which is saying something.
Because if she sees like children behaving nicely, it like takes days off of her probationary period.
You know, she'll get to go to heaven sooner.
But if she sees children misbehaving, that adds time.
So I forgot that you should think about that.
The next time you're thinking of being a naughty little child is you're making it really hard for Ariel to get to the angels in heaven.
That's right.
And this story was written.
150 years ago, 300 years, yet she needs your help.
Please behave.
Clean your room for the little mermaid for the love of ariel or whatever was her name?
No, she had no name.
Her name fred.
Yes uh, fred is exactly what my uh podcast listeners hope it is.
Um, unless it's bob, that was an excellent origin story for how you fell in love with weird messed up fairy tales.
Yeah, What about you?
I don't know if you've talked.
Have you talked about your origin story before with the pod?
It's an interesting question.
So I was a teacher and one day they asked if I'd be willing to be a substitute librarian for a day.
And I said, yes, because librarian is the best job, the best job.
And they were like, you're going to be telling stories to second graders.
And I said, no problem.
I teach second graders.
And they said, you're going to read them a story.
We can read them anything you want.
And I said, great.
So I went home and I was looking around my shelves these shelves right here for a story to read to the kids.
And I came across this book.
This is my copy of the real Grimm fairy tales.
And I had like read a couple of them in college, but I didn't know it well.
And I opened it up to a story called Faithful Johannes, which I had never seen before.
That's a good one.
You know that one.
And in Faithfully Ohana's, two children get their heads cut off by their parents.
They get put back on again, so they're fine.
But I was like, that's interesting.
Can I read this to second graders?
Will I get fired?
And then I thought, let's find out.
Yeah, why not?
Only one way to know.
So I brought it in and I started reading to these kids and very quickly they started to get nervous.
So I'd make jokes to calm them down or I would warn them some really terrifying was about to happen.
And I think I did a pretty good job, because by the end of the story I looked up and every kid had the same expression on his or her face.
Every kid looked exactly like this.
Like which in for the podcast listeners.
Like they look traumatized.
And so I dismissed them.
But this one little girl came up to me afterwards.
I'll never forget this because this moment changed my life.
She stuck her finger in my face and she said, that was good.
You should make that into a book.
And I went home and I wrote it down and I sent it to an agent whose kid I taught.
Like I just happen to know this person.
And I wrote it actually as a picture book.
Oh.
And she took it to an editor at Penguin who she knew liked fairy tales.
And the editor invited me to Penguin and the editor sat me down and said, it's interesting.
You wrote this as a picture book.
Two things.
First of all, it's 4,000 words, which is very long for a picture book.
And second of all, two children are decapitated in it.
And I said, oh, yeah, right.
And she said, if you could make this into a novel, I would consider it.
And so I turned that into the first chapter of A Tale Dark and Grim.
That's so exciting.
So I'm assuming that that little girl gets some royalties now.
She gets nothing.
Oh, but I still know her.
She actually I was I was a few years after that.
I was doing an event at the I was at the Brooklyn Book Festival and I told that story.
And this girl comes up to me afterwards and she goes, I think I was in that class.
And I go, you were the girl.
It was you.
And that girl was me.
No, somehow we're the same age, but somehow.
Yeah, I love that idea, though.
Yes, we should change the origin story and actual person, Violet.
I'm sorry, Liz is taking your place.
I'm honored.
I think it's funny that you talked about Anderson.
Yep.
Because I have a problem with Anderson.
I have a feud with Anderson.
He doesn't know about it unless he's also seafoam.
And then maybe he might know about it.
He was a drama queen.
Yes, he was into the drama.
My feud is so I really love grim fairy tales in particular because I believe they dramatize the emotional and psychological shape of kids' lives.
I didn't make this idea up.
It's a pretty well-known idea, first popularized by Bruno Bettelheim.
But the idea that kids are dealing with really difficult things in their lives and they go through these crazy weird, scary situations.
All of my episodes, all the podcasts, all the stories that I tell you got a kid you love.
They go through something really tough and then they find a way to triumph at the end.
And it feels to me like the structure of childhood, right?
The structure of childhood ideally is You know, kids, life is tough.
You like show up in a classroom with a grown up you've never met.
You have to do whatever they say.
There's a bunch of other inmates.
I mean, children who like could be doing anything to you while the teacher's back is turned.
And you got to just navigate all of that.
And then the next year we're like starting again.
So like they're going and that's just one example.
And then kids do in the vast vast majority of cases grow up and integrate the things they've learned.
Ideally, they become like good people.
And so that's, to me, the structure of a lot of grim fairy tales.
It is not the structure of many Anderson fairy tales.
Not at all.
Anderson is like you know, things were bad and then they got really bad and then she died of cold and hunger.
Anderson is a great reader to read.
If you're a kid, that's really into schadenfreude, which is this fabulous word that means you like to watch other people suffer.
Right.
And you know that sounds really mean, but I'm sure you know your little brother, little sister, their ice cream cone drops and you're like that's kind of funny.
That's like the kind of stories that Hans Christian Andersen writes, except very sad, I will say.
They're weird, but definitely there's some weirdness like with the Brothers Grimm.
But I would say that they're largely sad, except for my two favorites, which are the Snow Queen happy ending and the Tenderbox, which is wacky but happy ending.
Do you want to tell us?
A little bit of one of those stories?
Oh my gosh.
Well, it'll have to be the tinderbox because that one's crazy and it's much shorter.
The Snow Queen's very long.
Remind us.
In the tinderbox, we meet a soldier who's just coming home from the war.
And on his way home, he meets this like little old lady giving them witch vibes.
And she's like, excuse me, sir.
Could you please hop down into this tree and retrieve my old tinderbox for me?
And he's like, I guess I will.
And she's like you're going to meet three dogs down there and they're really scary, but don't worry about it.
I'm going to give you my apron.
You just put the dog on the apron.
He's going to go to sleep and you can grab that tinderbox and whatever else is there you can keep.
That's key.
So he hops down that tree and he does.
He meets this dog with eyes the size of teacups.
And he's like, here, sit on this apron.
And the dog's like, all right, take a little nap.
And there's all these copper coins there.
So the soldier fills his pocket with the copper coins.
And then he goes and he meets a dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels, which is a really interesting visual.
Like, is the dog a regular sized dog with huge eyeballs or is it like a big dog?
That's nightmare stuff.
Well, it goes to sleep on the apron.
It has silver coins all around.
You grab the silver coins.
And then the third dog, you can probably guess, has gold coins.
And his eyes are as big as, oh my gosh, it's like this tower in Copenhagen.
I can't remember the name of it in Denmark.
Anyway, that's where the tinderbox is.
When he gets back up on the tree, he's like, so what's the deal with this tinderbox?
Like, you seem pretty into it.
And she's like, none of your business.
And he cuts her head off.
He's like, all right, well, he just cuts her head off.
This is the hero of our story, folks.
He's not always very heroic.
You know, I guess sometimes in these old fairy tales they're like the only good witch is one whose head's been cut off.
So he does that.
He takes a tinderbox.
Well, not a very nice thing to do, but it works out very well for him because that tinderbox will summon those dogs every time he strikes a match.
A tinderbox is like a lighter, I would say.
It's more like a lighter, one of those lighters.
Little clicky ones.
And he can summon the dogs and the dogs will get him whatever he wants.
And so he becomes really rich.
Along the way, he like kind of kidnaps this princess.
Oh, my goodness.
There's a way to make it nicer.
I think you could make you could make it a little less a little less crazy.
But I mean, there's a reason why Anderson is so nutty.
Yeah.
But eventually the two of those crazy kids get married.
But does she want to get married after he kidnapped her?
I think she does.
See, I guess things are a little complicated for the princess because her parents are so protective of her.
They like never let her go out.
She never gets to meet anyone.
And even though, like the soldier meets her in kind of a sneaky way that I don't recommend, like I think he probably should have knocked, maybe knocked on the door and been like hey, do you want to come hang out with me and my weird dogs?
That would be the way I would go about it.
And that's how everyone should go about it.
But maybe he was helping her escape.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think so.
And so at the end her parents try to prevent the marriage and the soldier gets back at them in a real crazy way.
And she doesn't seem too sad about it.
She's like, all right, let's get married.
You know, I think she had a little situation she needed to escape.
Yeah, yeah.
So he was helping her escape and he, you know, murdered one witch.
And You know a happy ending is a questionable thing there, because if a bad guy is happy, is it happy.
Is it happy?
But is he the bad guy?
I don't know.
See, children, the world is a complex place.
You talked about one of your Ask Adam sessions about how the important things to you in a fairy tale that you do have a hero you can root for and that you do have a happy ending and that sometimes you'll finesse massage the tails you know.
Yeah, I rewrite the tails.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, absolutely.
The tinderbox would require.
You know, I think like maybe that witch would have to be really scary and the soldiers like defending himself.
And that's how she, you know, gets out of the picture.
I do.
I rewrite my stories a lot because there are some grim tales that are just pretty much you can just straight up tell them and they're great.
But for me, you know, the Grimm brothers were just.
You know, Hans Christian Andersen was inventing stories.
But the Grimm brothers were just capturing a tale at a certain moment told by a certain person.
Right.
So there is nothing.
And then they did edit them and improve them.
But there's nothing sacred about the story as they told it.
This is in some sense, like a cultural inheritance that we all have inherited just by having their book.
And so I find that it's absolutely my right, everyone's right, to take the ideas from the story and then retell them how we want to retell them, because the person who told it to them was doing that.
And so yeah, I definitely have certain rules that you know.
Yeah, that main character, you got to care about him.
There has to be crazy events that are scary, but also funny.
And then there's got to be some sort of cathartic triumph at the end.
And you'd think maybe that makes them feel formulaic.
But to me they're just so weird that there is no end of shocking weirdness that can come out of this fairy tale tradition.
Oh, sure.
And I mean the big difference with Anderson and Grimm, of course, which you just alluded to, with him kind of creating his own story, some of which were inspired by folklore and are very similar to some of the Brothers Grimm stories.
But he was doing like in the, in the, in the academic world, in the big smarty pants people world.
You know we call his fairy tales were literary fairy tales because he was kind of creating these original works.
And the Grimm brothers were collecting folklore, which are stories that belong to the people they're collecting them from, you know.
And so since they belong to us, whatever version we tell, it's the version.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Right.
These are our stories.
I love that.
I really do.
So speaking of telling fairy tales, you are a children's librarian.
Have you ever intentionally or accidentally told a really messed up fairy tale to kids?
Or what is your experience of telling fairy tales to children?
I believe in some of my book clubs we've probably talked a little bit about some like messed up origins, fairy tales.
I've definitely done some shows for teenagers where we've talked about it.
And at those events, I really like to get into like some of the weirder Cinderella's because, of course, the Brothers Grimm versions of stories aren't the only versions.
They're all over the world.
In fact, there's like thousands of versions of Cinderella, all different shoes, all different types of princes that she meets.
Sometimes the story doesn't end at the ball and she goes through a whole sequel part where she gets like swallowed by a whale in one version.
That's a cool one.
Sometimes she gets revenge on her step family.
And so I like to tell those versions of you know stories, the versions of stories.
You know one version, but here are some of the other ones and the weird, wacky ways that they turn.
And, The teens have really enjoyed that.
Yeah, I'm sure they do.
Teens love vengeance.
But you know what?
So do kids.
We all love we all love a little bit of bloody vengeance.
We like to see justice prevail.
Yes.
And sometimes it does darkly.
Yes.
I was just thinking about the crab man's daughter, that episode which I'm going to record for your social media feed soon.
And when I was recording it with the kids for the Grim Grimmer, Grimmest.
At one point the girls like fight back against the king.
They become these amazing mermaids.
And this girl just added one of the children that I was telling a story to just shouts out of nowhere.
We are women and we are terrifying.
And I'm not a woman, but it was awesome.
I just felt, yes, that vengeance, that revenge.
Oh, so good.
So, yeah, that's that's the feeling we're looking for.
Yeah.
Well, I have to tell your listeners that their input is my favorite part of your podcast.
You're fine, Adam, but the kids are the stars.
I agree.
They're the secret.
And that's how it came about actually, because you know, I told that fairy tale to to Violet in her class.
And then I published the book.
And then I'm going around promoting the book around the country.
I was doing a lot of stuff in Texas, driving from school to school in Texas, selling my books and telling them grim fairy tales.
And it became clear to me very quickly that the best part was the things that the kids were saying back to me that I was like this fairy tale is amazing.
And the kids are even more amazing.
And so in the early, early days of podcasting 2017 or something, somebody approached me and was like would you be willing to give any ideas for a podcast?
And I was like, in fact, I do.
You all need to hear what these kids say when they hear real fairy tales.
And so yeah, the kids are the star, but don't actually tell them that, because then they get you know, then they want to talk too much and they get swelled heads and kids, you're fine.
You're just along for the ride.
Please stop interrupting me.
There's just enough.
There's just enough happening.
You don't want to overdo it.
Yeah, well, I, you know, I actually go through the same thing with my grown up audiences.
Grown ups experience fairy tales in a very similar way to kids, because I do story time for children and then I do story time for adults.
I see the responses.
And you know, a lot of times my followers will crack jokes about the fairy tale that I'm like.
Why did I think of that?
That was really funny.
Or they just relate to it in a way, in a new way, similar to your audience, you know.
Yeah.
And you unfortunately don't get to incorporate them in.
But I guess because comments are sort of part of the experience.
Yeah.
You know, the people other people can read them and riff off of that for sure.
Yeah.
I was storytelling only online for so long and just kind of like talking into my phone and people listening on the other side that getting to do it live in the past year has been really lovely.
And because it's a really important part of storytelling.
Yes, it's a it is a social experience.
Absolutely.
And you have some public events coming up, actually, I think.
That was a transition that we did not plan, but I think you've got two in New York and a couple in Rhode Island.
Is that right?
I do.
I'm doing a ton of Rhode Island events because that's where I am and it's tiny and I can literally go all over the place.
In October, I'm coming to New York to P&T Knitwear.
I'm going to be doing a show in Baltimore and Richmond Virginia Portland, Maine mostly northeast places.
That's great.
When are you going to be in Baltimore?
I'm going to be in Baltimore in November on November 13th or 14th.
I can't remember which.
OK, awesome.
I'm going to be in Baltimore on September 19th at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 4 p.m.
Roland Avenue, everybody.
So, yes, unfortunately, we will not overlap.
But Baltimore folks, you're being taken care of.
Patrick, let's go!
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Hey, sorry, this is kind of a bad time.
Claire and I just found a major clue and now it's airborne.
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And remember, it's not a Smurf.
I'm assuming that your listeners have gotten into your broader oeuvre of works, and if they haven't, they should.
I certainly hope so.
Thank you.
And so I wondered how fairy tales have influenced the stories that you've told, since A Tale, Dark and Grim.
I can guess how they've influenced maybe your medieval piece, Inquisitor's Tale.
Am I remembering that correctly?
Yes, you are right.
I was a team librarian when that came out, so there's a gap in my knowledge there.
And then, of course, the World War Two series.
Yeah.
So I just wondered how, how those stories, which are obviously so important to you, have influenced your work in genres outside.
Yeah, that's such a good question.
I think two main ways.
The first is.
The most obvious way, which is like sometimes there are fairy tale elements that I am so inspired by that I bring them into the other books.
So the World War Two books Max in the House of Spies and Max in the Land of Lies are about.
You know they're like take place during World War Two.
There's a real kid.
But on his shoulder appear these two creatures, kobolds.
And while I might have first heard of kobolds through Dungeons and Dragons, kobolds in Dungeons and Dragons are very different from kobolds in German mythology.
And so through fairy tales, creatures like kobolds became very clear.
Kobolds, one of my favorite like fairy tale facts ever.
So a kobold in German mythology is a spirit that lives either in your house or where you work and creates mischief and makes your life miserable.
And when they were mining this very beautiful blue stone?
When they broke it open, poisonous gas would escape and miners would get sick.
And they blamed it on kobolds, which is why they named that stone kobold.
Very cool.
So cobalt blue, the color, is actually named after the mythical creature of a cobalt.
Awesome.
Which is a dragon-ish creature, right?
Am I right?
No, only in D&D.
Oh, okay.
They're not outside.
They do look dragon-ish.
But in German mythology, they just look like little men or people.
They can take all sorts of different forms, actually.
There are a huge long list of different kinds of cobalts.
So generally, it's just like a mischief-making creature.
Like Smurfs.
That messes with you.
No, it's not a smurf.
Liz knows the podcast.
I do.
But the other way that they really, and much more so in fact, inspire my books is the satisfying structure of a fairy tale from the very beginning, from a tale, dark and grim, structured how I make my chapters.
So at Tale Dark and Grim, each chapter is its own fairy tale and they are woven together into one big story.
So each chapter begins once upon a time and ends with at least some sort of happily ever after, even if it continues to the next story.
And I've continued to do that in my books, so that not all but most of my books each chapter should hopefully have a fairly satisfying structure.
That I learned from telling fairy tales and adapting them into chapters.
Because I want you to start a chapter and get into it and be like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen.
And then you get this cathartic resolution.
Other authors, other wonderful authors.
Do you know, like page turning chapters where the scene like a quick scene and you don't know what's going to happen next and you turn the page?
That's fun too.
But for me, the way I think about structuring my stories really came from learning and telling fairy tales.
Yeah, there is kind of a nice tradition of like World War II stories and fantasy, at least.
And fairytale.
There's a great book for grownups, The Book of Lost Things, I think is a beautiful illustration of that.
And Narnia.
In a way I think you know you've got.
Escaping these horrors of war through the fantasy is.
Exactly.
And the movies that Pan's Labyrinth is the same idea.
Totally.
Yeah.
Too scary for me.
Oh, yeah.
I love that one.
It looks incredible.
I'm dipping my toe into scarier movies.
I can take in my fairy tales, I guess.
But sometimes in movies, I'm like, no, no, too much.
It's very different.
It's very different.
And we had to think a lot about this because A Tale, Dark and Grim, was made into a show for Netflix animated show.
And it's very different when because a book you choose what you imagine.
Yeah.
And it's and you make a decision and the podcast is like halfway between.
You're hearing what I'm saying, sort of whether you want to or not.
And that's why I give you a warning at the beginning of each episode.
You know, turn down the volume and count to five, and so that you are ready to not hear something if you don't want to.
Whereas the book, the easiest thing in the world to do is just to close it.
Stop reading.
Every time you open a book, you close it.
So easy to do.
And then, with a podcast, you're hearing it whether you want to or not, unless you're quick on the volume.
But you can still choose what you're sort of imagining.
On a TV show, it's all being imagined for you.
So you're visualizing stuff that you don't necessarily want to, which means that the TV show of A Tale, Dark and Grim there's some stuff that is so cool in there and I love it and I helped make it.
But also, it is definitely not for everybody.
I had a friend write to me.
Pretty close friend.
And she was like so my daughter was watching Netflix and she came in crying because some show upset her.
And I was like, what show was this?
And she couldn't really describe it to me.
And finally, I pieced it together that it was your show.
And I was like, I'm I'm so sorry.
So, yeah, that's the plight of being a children's author of dark stories.
For sure.
I'm very nestled right now in research for Alvin Schwartz's dark scary story series.
Of course.
And all of the challenges that people tried to that people were nervous about with that book.
Yeah.
The kids who really love it and about the kids who are like, I'm never sleeping again.
Not every book.
But it's such a good point that terrified me.
It's really easy to close a book, put it in the freezer if you don't like what's happening.
But like with a TV show, you can't stop watching.
You're like, oh, it's all happening in front of me and I can't turn my eyes away.
And then.
You're scared.
And by the time the things happen that you don't want to, it's already happened.
You are always going to turn it off too late.
So listeners, kids.
If you don't know Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, that's the one right.
That like formed.
So Liz and I, about the same age, it formed our generation.
We all read that book or so many of us.
But it is truly scary.
I would say it is grimaced.
Every story is definitely grimaced.
For sure.
For sure.
Yeah, it is for kids, but scary.
It's grim.
So you started like breaking into fairy tales outside the world of the Brothers Grimm.
And I wondered where else you would like to go.
And I have a suggestion.
Oh, my gosh.
OK, I'll tell you where I'm going, but then I really want to hear your suggestion.
So all my Grimm Grimmer, Grimmest listeners know that we do a lot of stories by Franz Xaver von Schönwirth.
This book is called The Turnip Princess.
What's so cool about Franz Xaver von Schönwirt other than saying his name, which is one of the most fun things you can do is that his stories were only discovered about 20 years ago in a cardboard box in the Bavarian National Library by a graduate student.
And so he collected stories, the way the Brothers Grimm did around the end of their career in the 1850s.
He was doing his work.
And some of the stories... are fairly well-formed and well-told.
But because he never got around to editing and publishing them, many of them are kind of a jumble.
You're like, what is even happening in the story?
I can't quite tell.
But the details are so unbelievably weird that it's great material for me to take and reform and then put out there.
There was an episode in the new season of Grim Grimmer Grimmest called The Twelve Tortoises.
And it's just.
The whole thing has nothing to do with tortoises, until the very end when 12 tortoises walk out and the main character has to figure out how to transform them back into people.
And then it's over.
You're like, what?
Sounds awesome.
It is awesome.
So, yeah, there's so many examples of his weird, weird stories.
Also in season five of Grim Grimmer Grimmest, the newest season, I have a guest storyteller.
Join me on an episode.
Her name is Sana Ali Mohamed and she and I tell The Fisherman and the Djinn one of the Arabian Nights stories.
That's a good one.
Which she heard growing up.
It's such a good story.
And there's a grim version of it, too, but I definitely prefer that version.
And Sana and I, she did such a good job of making it super funny.
So that's where we've started to expand.
But what is your recommendation?
OK, I have I'll try not to give you too many.
But the first one I thought of was Italo Calvino's folktales from Italy.
He was basically kind of like the Brothers Grimm of Italy.
And they're very funny.
There's a lot of really weird stuff.
And I think that they have the same quality of what you like about Grimm folktales.
And I think your kids would like them too.
Um, i'm trying to think.
Couple examples one, there's like one about a princess who lives inside an apple.
Um, there's one about a boy who is um well he's, this is gonna sound really grim um, but he's cut in half by a witch and he lives two different lives one half, one place, another place yep, that's called the cloven boy.
Okay, i have to tell that.
Yeah yeah, there's some really good stuff in there and there's a lot of like familiar things as well as like the italian versions of Little Red Riding Hood, which is an ogre instead of a wolf, and fun things like that.
I also think you should look up Hungarian folktales.
Cengiz Alka is a great storyteller for those.
There's a great YouTube series.
I'm looking at my fairy tale shelf as you're talking.
I'm not distracted.
I've got some of these here and I was going to hold them up if I could.
Yeah.
So.
I have it.
And like the Grimm Brothers book, I hadn't read it yet.
I haven't read it yet.
So, OK, turns out I will.
Yeah, leaf through that baby.
You'll love it.
Yeah.
Actually, Italian fairy tales in general are really fun.
Some of them are really grim, like Mr. Anderson, but some of them are really fun and weird.
I mean, like Pinocchio is a great example of one that's really wacky.
And you know, a lot of these grim fairy tales first appear in collection by a italian collector named de basile, who was collecting fairy tales back in like the 1600s, so like they go back.
In fact, many of them go back to italy, and then even before that, and this is uh, something that i learned while writing the inquisitor's tale.
Some of them go back as far as something called the Gesta Romanorum, which were these Roman stories that passed through the Middle Ages and then were then written down.
So a lot of these fairy tales go way back even to the Roman Empire and before.
Yeah.
And some people who are much smarter than me, like scientists, think that there's evidence that, like Beauty and the Beast is 4000 years old.
Wow.
Isn't that crazy?
You know, some form of it.
I'm sure it was a very different version of it back then.
Yes.
4000 years old.
Yeah.
Well, because I do believe there are like – all of our cultures are different or all around the world, but there are some very fundamental things that we all share, all humans share.
And I found this with the fairy tales.
When I go to Japan or India or the Texas border with Mexico or Lancaster, Pennsylvania all very, very different places.
The kids respond in very predictable ways to these fairy tales.
They scream.
They ask a lot of the same questions, often in the same order, because we all share certain things like
We love our parents.
We want to be safe.
We want to eat.
We are afraid of evil witches and, you know, ogres in the forest.
You know, all of these things we share.
And so they go way back.
OK, those are great recommendations.
The cloven boy may end up on.
That's a fun one.
Before you know it.
I think it's very similar to like Hans, my hedgehog in some ways.
And then, oh, my last suggestion is you should do some Filipino folktales.
And I happen to know a children's librarian who's Filipino, who would love to pop in and maybe tell some someday.
And that's me.
OK.
All right.
I did not know you were Filipino.
They're they're really fun.
There's a lot of there's a lot of folktales where people turn into fruit.
Love that.
I do.
I would have to find some with a happy ending.
I will say that there were some of them are kind of sad, but I bet I could find them.
Well, yeah, we'll work on it together.
I mean, I like, when I do a story with somebody, I love to work together to make it feel like a grim grim, grimest episode, while also being true to the original fairy tale.
Yeah, I'll send you.
There's a great series of Filipino folktales for kids that you should definitely pick up.
Well, it sounds like listeners of Grim Grimmer Grimmest.
This is not the last you're going to hear from Liz Gattacco.
I am so grateful that you have had this conversation with me, that I've gotten to have this conversation with you.
I am a big fan of your work.
Again, grown-ups, check out her book.
Grown-ups only.
Her last name is spelled G-
O-T-A-U-C-O.
Liz Gutaco, go look it up.
And yeah, this will not be the last time you hear from Liz, I hope.
And of course, the new season of Grim Grimmer Grimmest is on Pinna.
If you subscribe, go to pinna.fm.
Use code Grimm, G-R-I-M-M, for a discount.
You can hear it all right now.
Ad-free.
Or you can wait until September 18th and then you will hear one episode a week with ads, but you'll get to hear them going wide everywhere you listen to podcasts.
I really think you're going to like this new season, so make sure you listen.
Far away on the high Caribbean seas roams a swashbuckling pigeon-loving, burrito-gobbling pirate who's well a bit different than the other pirates.
Introducing the new podcast, light catchers season one bob the bad pirate.
Bob the bad pirate wasn't bad because he liked to hurt people or call other pirates names like petunia pillow pants.
Bob the bad pirate was bad because he just wasn't very good at being a pirate.
Give her me tutors, we are pirates.
Listen now to Lightcatchers wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at BeALightcatchercom.
Light up the lanterns and follow me.
Introducing A is for Alfie, the first picture book from the award-winning Pinna series Quentin and Alfie's ABC Adventures.
Alfie thinks his name is a little weird, but with his babysitter Quentin, he discovers that every letter holds endless possibilities.
From A is for acrobat to E is for electrician.
Written by award-winning author Randy DuBerck and illustrated by Derek Brook, This heartwarming, diverse read-aloud is perfect for kids 3 to 6, guiding them through letters while helping them love who they are.
Pick up A is for Alfie wherever books are sold, and start your ABC adventure on the page.
Grim Grimmer Grimmest is a Penna Original Production.
Created, written, and narrated by me, Adam Gidwitz, author of a tale dark and grim.
Produced and edited by Kaylin West.
Executive produced by Molly Barton and
