When she was a little girl, her dad used to read to her from a big book of fairy tales. They were the real thing, Grimm, not Disney. And some of them were grim. Her mother disapproved: “Such stuff! You’ll give the poor girl nightmares.” But Molly loved them, the stranger the better. There was darkness and death and plenty of wickedness, sure, but it was no worse than the nightly news. And there was magic, too—spells and powers, transformations and wishes granted. That was what Molly loved, what she remembered best about those stories. When Cinderella planted a branch on her mother’s grave and watered it with her tears, a magic tree grew.

—The Girl Who Threw Butterflies