Literature / The Sisters Grimm

L to R: Puck, Daphne, Sabrina

The Sisters Grimm is a children's fantasy mystery book series written by Michael Buckley and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. The series consists of nine novels published from 2005 to 2012, which collectively tell a Fractured Fairy Tale based around crimes that happen in the small town of Ferryport Landing.

Ferryport Landing is a town where nothing is what it seems and fairytale creatures, called Everafters, roam the streets. Sometimes, mass destruction follows them, and somehow, none of the humans notice the strange magical happenings, although this can be attributed to the effects of "forgetful dust".

The main protagonists, sisters Sabrina and Daphne Grimm (respectively 11 and 7 years old at the start of the series), are related to The Brothers Grimm. After the girls' parents disappear mysteriously, they skip around foster homes and end up going to live with a grandmother they didn't know they had. Upon learning of the existence of Everafters, they join the family business of solving mysteries, which are possibly linked to the disappearance of their parents, all the while dealing with the 4000-year-old trickster fairy Puck.

However, the Everafters are kept in Ferryport Landing by a magical barrier, and within the town exists a group of Everafters with plans to escape and Take Over the World known as the Scarlet Hand. As the only known way to destroy this barrier is to kill all members of the Grimm family, the sisters' mysteries end up building to an all-out war against the Scarlet Hand.

All the books, in order, are:

1. The Fairytale Detectives
2. The Unusual Suspects
3. The Problem Child
4. Once Upon a Crime
5. Magic and Other Misdemeanors
6. Tales from the Hood
7. The Everafter War
8. The Inside Story
9. The Council of Mirrors

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Tropes and other misdemeanors:

• Academy of Adventure: In book two, Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck are enrolled in Ferryport Landing Elementary. The children are practically zombie slaves, the teachers are evil, the school's guidance councilor tries to kill everybody, and the principal turns out to be the Pied Piper and is controlling the human students.
• Accidental Misnaming: Puck and Mayor Charming have a problem with names. Ms. Smirt never refers to the sisters by their proper names.
• Action Girl: Nearly all the women in the book.
• Aerith and Bob: Baba Yaga and Jacob Grimm is just one example.
• The Alleged Car: The Grimm family's beat up old car is so loud, you cannot have a single conversation inside it.
  "Are we close to Faerie yet?"
  "Oh, I love chili, but I'm afraid it doesn't love me," Granny shouted back.
  "No, not chili! Faerie!" Sabrina cried. "Are we getting closer?"
  "Why no, I've never kissed a monkey. What a weird question."
• All Part of the Show: When the Jabberwocky breaks into the school.

• Artifact of Death: The Vorpal Blade and any other magical item.
• Ax-Crazy: Little Red Riding Hood, anybody?
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Very frequently between Sabrina and Puck.
  • The two of them having that conversation after Oberon's funeral.
  • Puck pulling a Deus ex Machina and saving Sabrina from falling to her death in Once Upon A Crime.
• Babies Ever After: Eventually, Puck and Sabrina get married and have two daughters.
• Badass Creed: "We are the Grimms. This is what we do."
• Badass Family: The Grimms all fight crimes, sometimes against creatures that could possibly eat them. Definitely badass.
• Bad Future: Yes it was. Fortunately, the heroes were able to change it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Puck and Sabrina, inasmuch as a couple of twelve year olds can have. They eventually get married.

• Big Bad Friend: Mirror was the Master all along.
• The Big Bad Wolf: Obviously. Except it's actually the spirit of ferocity removed from an ordinary wolf using the North Wind, which can enter people and transform them into the Wolf.
• Big Damn Heroes / The Cavalry: Puck has his moments, although he always tries to pass it off as a Villainous Rescue. So does Prince Charming.
• Big Eater: Daphne and Puck are said to have bottomless stomachs. The only way to wake Daphne up is to tell her breakfast is ready.

• Catch a Falling Star: Puck catches Sabrina at least a million times.
• Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: In The Queen of Hearts' house.
• Creepy Child / Cute and Psycho: Red, at least until the North Wind blows the madness out of her.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All nine books' exterior color schemes are red, blue, dark blue, green, purple, orange, black, light green, and light blue, respectively.
• Cool Old Lady: Granny Relda's been everywhere in the world, even to Mount Everest. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.
• Curse Escape Clause:
  • Sabrina turning into a frog. The spell could only be broken by a prince.
  • Then there was the giant, robotic witch.
  • Sabrina jumping onto a hot-air balloon, off the Empire State Building.
• Damsel in Distress: Puck is constantly having to save Sabrina's butt.
• Deadpan Snarker / Knight in Sour Armor: It seems like almost everyone in the series is like this, but mostly Sabrina and Puck.
• Deflector Shields: Well, all the Everafters are stuck in Ferryport Landing and they cannot escape...
• Demonic Dummy: The marionettes.
• Department of Child Disservices: To the EXTREME.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: In The Problem Child, the vorpal blade necessary to kill the Jabberwocky is split into thirds distributed to different places amongst Ferryport.
• Distant Finale: The ending of book 9. The last sentence of the series is even Sabrina asking her kids if they know about the Brothers Grimm, to boot.
• Disney Creatures of the Farce
• Dodgeball Is Hell: Sabrina and Puck get involved in some of this in book 2, but Puck manages to stay in the game while simultaneously defending Sabrina...only for a dodgeball to get Sabrina out at the last minute and make Puck the winner.
• Drives Like Crazy: Granny Relda is not allowed, under the law, to be behind the wheels of a car. Sabrina actually goes onto the opposite lane while driving. She couldn't even reach the pedals, so Daphne had to push them. To be fair, she was trying to escape being eaten.

• Enemy Within: Mr. Canis, aka, The Big Bad Wolf.
• Face Doodling: Puck pulls this on Sabrina in book 3, birthing "Captain Doodieface".
• The Fair Folk: Puck and his family.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Briar's death in book 7 while attempting to fend off against a dragon. With a swat of the wing, she gets whacked into the air and slams her head on a tree.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Apparently, nobody in Ferryport Landing has a gun. Knives, sure, but no guns.
• Faux Death: Veronica and Henry, Sabrina and Daphne's parents, are under a sleeping spell.
• First Girl Wins: Well, Puck did meet Sabrina first, and they do end up together. However, he knew Moth years before he came to Ferryport Landing, and she lost.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Little Red Riding Hood calls her Jabberwocky a "kitty".
• Forgets to Eat: Sabrina is known not to eat, but it's probably because she hates her grandmother's cooking.
• Fractured Fairy Tale
• Gasshole: Ew, Puck! Gross!
• Good is Not Nice: Mr. Canis. Snow White can also get like this at times, especially in Book 7.
• Grand Theft Me: In book 8, Granny forces Mirror to take hold of her own body in order to save the newly born Grimm brother, much to Mirror's dismay.
• Grand Finale: Council of Mirrors, the big and dramatic conclusion to the series.
• Growing Up Sucks: Puck even goes as far as saying that it's a disease, and it's all Sabrina's fault he is growing up. In his defense, it technically is her fault. After falling in love with her, he slowly begins aging so he and Sabrina always appear to be the same age.
• Gut Punch: Briar's death, which really paves the way for a jarring Mood Whiplash within book 7, going from the events of an intense Everafter war to a solemn funeral.
• Hero with an F in Good: Defines Puck, and possibly Charming.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Mirror
• I'm a Humanitarian: Baba Yaga even decorates her front yard with human skulls.
• Improbable Antidote: Ah, so that is how you cure it. Gross!
• It's All About Me: Puck has this in massive amounts.
• Kiss of Life: Sabrina attempts CPR on Puck just when he wakes up, ergo, humiliation on both parts.
• Killed Off for Real: Briar Rose, as well as Harry the mirror guardian, Mr. Seven.
• Knight in Shining Armor
• Last-Name Basis: Unless Puck is calling Sabrina ugly.
• Lethal Chef: Well, in Sabrina's point-of-view, Granny Relda's cooking is definitely disgusting and inedible. Granny Relda does make some funky and exotic dishes, but Puck and Daphne both enjoy them.
• Lethal Joke Item: In Tales from the Hood, Sabrina and Puck get the weapon that's been mentioned a few times since the fourth book. It commands the wind, it can blow the insanity out of a person, destroy buildings with a single puff... and it's a kazoo.

• The Mad Hatter: The real Mad Hatter who was the judge in a court case.

• Manipulative Bastard: The Master/Mirror.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The cover of Once Upon a Crime depicts Sabrina dangling from a rope high up above a city as a giant robotic witch is about to grab her. This doesn't happen in the book, although there is a robotic witch in the book. What does happen is that Oz forces Sabrina out of his hot air balloon, causing her to plummet to what seems to be her death until Puck rescues her.
• The Mole: Pinocchio.
• My Future Self and Me
• Near Misses: This happens to a lot of people a bunch of times.
• Never Mess with Granny: Granny Relda's middle name should be Badass, especially when she runs into Sabrina's room, uttering a battle cry and carrying a sword, ready to fight off whatever was threatening her granddaughter.
• Never Grew Up: Standard form of immortality for Everafters.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: This happens to Puck when he attempts to save Sabrina from the Jabberwocky after it corners them at a cafe. He has his wings ripped off.
• Nightmare Face: One of the pictures of Little Red Riding Hood in the second book. Brrr...
  • Here's the picture. It's freaky. You have been warned.
• Nonhuman Sidekick: Elvis the dog. All of the family's Everafter friends might also count.
• Nothing but Skulls: Even Baba Yaga's fence is made of skulls.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Tales from the Hood starts with a nightmare that Sabrina has in which she's completely naked.
• Objectshifting: Puck is able to turn into objects. In particular, he is fond of pretending to be a chair and then vanishing right when Sabrina tries to sit on him.
• Offstage Villainy: Nobody knows who the Master is until the very end of the seventh book.
• Older Than They Look: Puck is a four-thousand years old in a twelve-year-old's body. He's way freaking older than he looks.

• Perfectly Cromulent Word: In every book, Daphne manages to come up with a weird word in a language she calls "Daphne-ish"
• Person of Mass Destruction: Sabrina and Jacob both go power hungry in the third book, and they almost kill all the Everafters in the area.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The Master of the Scarlet Hand is very much politically incorrect.
  • Prince Atticus "Women are property" Charming
• Portal to the Past
• The Power of Love How Sabrina is able to get Mirror out of Granny's body.
• The Prankster: The worst prank Puck pulled on Sabrina was when he gathered a group of Pegasi with diarrhea and they...went... on Sabrina.
• Prince Charmless: Prince Charming, amusingly enough.
• Real Men Eat Meat: Puck did eat a horse for a bet.
• Really 700 Years Old: Most Everafters are literally more than seven hundred years old, and the ones that are not are more than a hundred.
  • Overlaps with Not Growing Up Sucks for Pinocchio. This leads him to join the Scarlet Hand.
• The Reveal: Mirror is The Master.

• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Sabrina has to tell her mom and dad that Puck is not her boyfriend as they watch him pull a prank on Sabrina.

• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Sabrina and Puck, especially in the last book.
• Slasher Smile: Little Red Riding Hood is very fond of these, and it doesn't help that she's mentally unstable. Hell, there's a drawing in book 2 of Red wearing a hood and shrouded in shadow evilly grinning directly at the reader, and it's probably one of the most terrifying things you'll ever see in a children's book.

• Teach Me How To Fight: Daphne and Sabrina learn karate from Snow White.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Trying to act like the hero is what got Puck into major trouble with the Jabberwocky.
• Time Travel: The Grimms toy around with the concept in book 5 in ways like meeting the future Sabrina and Daphne as well as fixing the Bad Future.
• Troubled, but Cute: Puck does insist he's a bad guy and it is beneath him to help people.
• True Love's Kiss: Sabrina and Daphne's parents are woken from their enchanted sleep by this; their dad's ex-girlfriend kisses him, and he then kisses his wife awake.
  • Puck eats one of the poison apples from Snow White's story, and Sabrina then has to kiss him.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The kazoo that controls the wind in Tales From the Hood. Sabrina and Puck had no idea what it was for until Sabrina blew it and it literally blew the bank away.
• Wham Episode: Book 7, considering it deals with a huge war amongst the Everafters and is reasonably quite a climactic point in the series.
  • The end of almost all the books. They are, after all, mystery stories.
• Wham Line: The Reveal of The Master's identity.
  Sabrina: You sick, twisted monster. Do you know the nightmare you have inflicted upon my family? You're a horrible, evil worm!
  Pinocchio: I'm not the Master!
  Puck: Why should we believe you?
  Mirror: Because I am the Master.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Shockingly of all, it comes from Puck.

• Would Hurt a Child: Nottingham in book 5. Hell, he almost does hurt a child (specifically, Daphne) with a dagger.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Briar in book 7. This act of bravery kills her.

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