With a name like Grimsbane, a person is bound to find connections to death, destruction, woe, and gloom. And readers will find all that in Joan Reardon’s The Grimsbane Family Witch Hunters.
Set in Witchless, Indiana, this novel for middle grade readers features Anna and Billy Grimsbane, twin siblings who are about to turn thirteen. Billy is a “nerd extraordinaire” and a lover of scones. He is also organized, intelligent, and fearless. Anna, on the other hand, is more impulsive. She is also naturally agile, protective, and loyal. Both are eager to enter the family business, although for very different reasons.
A family of witch hunters and cryptids, the Grimsbanes live by the motto “engage, incapacitate, and kill.” They see their role as one of protection, with needs for both a good offense and a good defense. After all, they have a legacy of wisdom collected in Diligence’s Diary, a record of encounters with witches and cryptids that chronicles the family’s history.
The family also carries a curse, one that will affect Billy when he turns thirteen, so the twins have a vested interest in hunting down the Watcher to protect Billy. This means they will have to enter the Not-So-Witchless Woods where the trees hum about hearses, worms, and corpses and where all manner of creatures lurk, including Melonheads, hell hounds, and White Screamers.
Before the twins can deploy their plan, however, Diligence’s Diary goes missing. Then, Billy himself disappears. Now, Anna must save her brother. To assist, Anna calls on her two best friends: Rosario Ortiz-Rivera and Suvi Kumar. Rosario knows how impulsive Anna can be, so she agrees to accompany her friend and serve as a negotiator. Suvi, on the other hand, is motivated by professional interest. A video programmer, she maintains a YouTube Channel called Ghouligans, and see an opportunity to secure some footage for her subscribers.
As the trio sets off into the woods, they encounter peril immediately when a hell hound bares its teeth. However, Taileybones turns out to be more friend than foe, and Anna learns what has made him so vengeful. Taileybones is also a wise creature. At one point on their excursion, Taileybones explains: “The mysteries of life and death are largely unknown and extremely complicated. . . . It is easy to get bogged down in the particulars, to get lost in the mysteries—especially for humans, who are guaranteed death in a very short time. People who spend their lives trying to understand or avoid the mysteries of death often forget to live” (160).
Another truth from Taileybones suggests that “humans rarely care about other humans. They don’t fully consider the consequences of their actions” (179). He also tells Anna: “It’s not up to you to decide who does and does not count as people” (228).
With these truths, Anna begins to question her family’s actions and beliefs. She has been blindly accepting the family’s mission, but the more stories and perspectives she learns, the more her own perspective broadens. As Anna acquires new information and has her own experiences in the woods, she realizes the flaws in the family’s record of knowledge, the lies in what has been passed along as historical truth. Anna wonders how a person can act without hearing someone else’s side. Rosario’s insistence on questioning and negotiating teaches Anna to listen to both sides. After hearing the stories of multiple creatures, Anna recognizes the value of communication and compromise.
If she finds her brother and they escape from the Watcher, Anna vows to share her new insight with her family, explaining how prejudice fuels harmful actions.
- Donna