ALA Booklist (Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

Amputating the "happily" from "ever after," Koertge's collection of free-verse poems wrings 23 old favorites into terse puddles of queasiness, grim endings, and ambiguous moral takeaways (which, to be fair, means they're not that far off from many of the originals). Not all the pieces land direct hits, but the best can be suggestively salacious, as when Cinderella's stepsisters recall, from the grave, how "Even in tatters / Ella was desirable little thigh showing / here, some soot at her cleavage. And what / a tease shing away at midnight leaving / the heir to the throne groaning in his purple / tights." Or they can be downright twisted, like when Bluebeard's doomed bride discovers that she might just get off on being serial-killed or the vision of vengeful Hansel and Gretel, who don't stop with the witch in the woods. Laden with entrails, revealed bone stumps, and bushels of decapitated heads, Dezsö's distinctive cut-paper silhouettes are dripping with grotesquery but also beautiful in their own indelible fashion. And they're a perfect match for Koertge's gritty, druggy, sexed-up visions.

Horn Book

With a contemporary sensibility and voice pitched perfectly to teenagers, Koertge retells, in free verse and from various points of view, twenty-three familiar tales. It's a swell mix of the comical, concrete, and macabre. Dezsv's choice of cut-paper illustrations is brilliant, a nod to Hans C. Andersens skill in that medium despite the radically different tone. Perfect for grabbing a restive class's attention.

Kirkus Reviews

Short, brisk vignettes flip traditional fairy tales onto their backs. Twenty-three rewritings disclose dark secrets. Although each ostensibly has its own narrator, a lascivious narrative tone runs throughout. Dezsö matches that tone with black cut-out silhouettes of death and dismemberment, breasts unobscured. Incest recurs, as does kinky sexuality. Red Riding Hood, one example of the latter, reveals, "I was totally looking / forward to that part. With the wolf and all. I'm into danger, / okay?" Kink is rarely acknowledged in teen literature; it's unfortunate that these tales are too abrupt to address the topic meaningfully. The line-breaks of Koertge's free verse seem gratuitous. Sexual imagery includes both children (Hansel and Gretel "eat and eat, filling up the moist recesses / of their little bodies") and projected rape-fantasy (the Beast claims that Beauty "almost wanted / me to break her neck and open her / up like a purse"). Descriptions are incomprehensibly flip ("Oh, her skin is white as Wonder bread, / her little breasts like cupcakes!") or harsh ("a beautiful girl…not the usual chicken head ho"). The voice dances from incongruous humor ("it's weird inside a wolf, / all hot and moist but no worse than flying coach to Newark") to modernity forced into fairy-tale diction ("She'd slept over at their hovels"). Will catch some eyes, but this feels like edginess for edginess's sake, no deeper. (Fractured fairy tales. 14 & up)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

With sardonic wit and a decidedly contemporary sensibility, Koertge (Shakespeare Bats Cleanup) retells 23 classic fairy tales in free verse, written from the perspectives of iconic characters like Little Red Riding Hood, as well as maligned or minor figures such as the Mole from Thumbelina and Cinderella-s stepsisters. For the princess from the Princess and the Pea, hypersensitivity isn-t all that great (-A puppy licked me and I-ve still got a scar-), and the Little Match Girl appears in a poem with the rhythm of a rap song (-She-s selling CDs on the corner,/ fifty cents to any stoner,/ any homeboy with a boner-). Several stories trade happily ever after for disappointment and discontent, as with the danger-addicted queen in Rumpelstiltskin, or with Rapunzel, who is left with a moody prince instead of the attentive witch who locked her in. Dezsö-s cut-paper Scherenschnitte-style silhouettes nod toward Hans Christian Andersen-s own papercuts-if Andersen were creating a storyboard for the Saw franchise. From Bluebeard-s beheaded wives to a bloody dismemberment in -The Robber Bridegroom,- there are gruesome surprises throughout. A fiendishly clever and darkly funny collection. Ages 14-up. (July)

School Library Journal (Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

Gr 7 Up-It's not so happy in Ever After-at least not in Koertge's verses, which skew and skewer traditional fairy tales. Cinderella's stepsisters ("We have names, by the way. She's Sarah/and I'm Kathy&30;") are understandably disgruntled, but wouldn't you expect Rapunzel to be satisfied? Not so: "&30;I love my daughter. But the prince is moody and thinks/of himself. While the witch thought only of me." These characters have pretty modern sensibilities; the Little Match Girl is selling CDs, warming herself on their lyrics; Red Riding Hood rattles, "Fine, fine, fine. Do you want to hear this story or not? Good./So I'm in the woods and I hear footsteps or, like, pawsteps&30;." The poems beg to be shared aloud, like the best gossip. The sensibilities are wry, often dark, and the language is occasionally earthy. Dezs&6;'s cut-paper illustrations extend the eldritch mix of folkloric material and macabre interpretations. This slim volume is at once simple and sophisticated, witty and unnerving. Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY