Where Do These Stories Come From?

Sometimes kids ask me where I get my ideas. My answer is always the same: I steal them. Every writer steals, and writers who work in folk traditions steal liberally. But we don’t just steal.

For hundreds of generations, writers and storytellers have taken the threads of older tales and have rewoven them into new garments—new garments that reflect our hands and our visions, and that fit the children we know and care for. All writers do this, even today. We who write in folk traditions are just a little more transparent about it.

My first book, A Tale Dark & Grimm, took its inspiration from the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and I was, in that book, often quite faithful to those awesome (and bloody) stories—just as the Brothers Grimm were often (but not always) quite faithful in retelling the stories that they collected. I am far less faithful to my sources in In a Glass Grimmly. This is because many of these tales are Kunstmärchen, or “original” fairy tales—tales that were invented by a known author, like Hans Christian Andersen or Christina Rossetti. And what better way to be faithful to invented stories than inventing my own? So the plot, the themes, and the architecture of In a Glass Grimmly are wholly mine, as they were in A Tale Dark & Grimm. But this time, most of the chapters are wholly mine, too, with a wink and a nod here and there to those awesome story-weavers who came before me.

My chapter “The Wishing Well” is based on “The Frog King or Iron Heinrich,” collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is the most faithful retelling in the book. The name of the kingdom, Märchen, is actually the German word for “fairy tales”—though “fairy tales” is a bad translation. Really it just means “stories you tell around your house if you want to scare the bejeezus out of everybody.” The details about tears on water waking the stars, and the stars granting wishes, were also used in my first book, A Tale Dark & Grimm. Those details comes from the Grimm tale “The Seven Ravens.”

The chapter “The Wonderful Mother” is based, loosely, on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

“Jack and Jill and the Beanstalk” is inspired by Joseph Jacobs’s story “Jack and the Beanstalk,” though I’ve changed just about everything in it. The chant “Marie had a little lamb” is a riff on the Mother Goose rhyme “Mary had a little lamb.” (Sorry to belabor the obvious here.) Jack’s rhyme about jumping over the candlestick is also from Mother Goose.

“The Giant Killer” is based, very loosely, on Joseph Jacobs’s “Jack the Giant Killer.” The setting and situations are quite different, but the tests, and Jill’s ultimate solution, were suggested by Jacobs’s text.

“Where You’ll Never Cry No More” is inspired by Scottish and Irish legends of the water nixie, though no specific tales were drawn upon. Just my messed up imagination. The beginning of that chapter, when Jack and Jill fall from the sky and then down the hill, and Jack breaks his head open, is my homage to the Mother Goose rhyme “Jack and Jill.”

“Goblin Market” is inspired by Christina Rossetti’s brilliant poem of the same name, which I really wish I had written. The fruit sellers’ chant is lifted directly from her poem.

“The Gray Valley” is original, though the three ravens, whom you might remember from A Tale Dark & Grimm, come from the Grimm tale “Faithful Johannes.”

“Death or the Lady” is inspired by three sources. The first is Frank Stockton’s original story, “The Lady or the Tiger,” first published in 1882. It is unforgettable and highly recommended—but better for adults than kids. The second is the Jewish folk tale “The Grand Inquisitor,” collected by Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin in While Standing on One Foot: Puzzle Stories and Wisdom Tales from the Jewish Tradition; this story also appears in Nathan Ausubel’s A Treasury of Jewish Folklore. The third source, where I first heard the riddle with the slips of paper and the casket, is a puzzler from the NPR show Car Talk—which was called “The Lady or the Tiger.”

“The Descent” and “Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende” are original. Jack’s mumbling about all the king’s horses and all the king’s men is a reference to the Mother Goose rhyme “Humpty Dumpty.” I must thank Chiara Frigeni for her help with my, shall we say, “creative” use of German in coming up with Eddie’s full name.

The chapters “The Others” and “Face to Face” are also original. When Jack and Jill start into the kingdom of Märchen, I quote the Mother Goose verse, “Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.” The rhyme “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” is from the Grimms’ “Snow White.” The rest of the mirror rhymes are invented. The Others’ punishment, and the fact that they unwittingly choose it themselves, is drawn from the Grimm tale “The Three Woodsmen.”

The book’s inscription comes from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13:12: “We see now as in a glass, dimly, but then we shall see face to face.” The book’s title, and the title of the last chapter, and the whole structure of the book, reflect this verse.