These shadowy, atmospheric novels for young readers find their inspiration in Snow White, the 19th-century German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. These aren't just "fractured" fairy tales, they've been bludgeoned in cold blood in a dark alley.
An international bestseller, here translated from the original Finnish, Salla Simukka's As Red as Blood (Crown) will chill and thrill. The debut of the As Red as Blood trilogy stars the tough-as-nails 17-year-old Lumikki, named after the Finnish Snow White. She stumbles into a real mystery: a stash of 30,000 euros, once blood-soaked but now washed and hung to dry in the darkroom of her "elite magnet school for the arts." As Lumikki gets pulled in to the murder-mystery by three "money-laundering" classmates, the narrative unfolds in a distant, observational, detective-novel style that suits both the story and the frigid Scandinavian setting. Readers are tossed only tantalizing morsels of Lumikki's own mystery--why she's living on her own and why she's become ninja-level-skilled at self-preservation. Greed, cruelty, crime, corruption, lust, secrets and betrayal run amok in this suspenseful YA trilogy debut.
Snow White: A Graphic Novel (Candlewick) by Matt Phelan (Bluffton; The Storm in the Barn) begins in New York City's Central Park in 1918 when the young Samantha "Snow" White's dying mother coughs bright red drops of blood into a handkerchief. Her father, the "King of Wall Street," remarries a vain, gold-digging, indeed evil Broadway star who eventually kills him and wants his daughter dead too. A band of street kids called "the Seven" save Snow just in time--more than once. How Phelan manages to tell this nail-biter of a story with so few words in comic-strip panels is a testimony to his great talent, and his murky pencil, ink and watercolor artwork elegantly captures the ominous mood. Dark, gorgeous and ultimately heartening. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness
