A Tale Dark and Grimm and Seedfolks

I read a kids book--A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz.  He blends several traditional tales from the Brother Grimm repertoire: Faithful Johannes, and Hansel and Gretel amongst others, into one coherent story.  Complete with all the gruesome features that make them interesting and worth retelling over and over.  I could see turning this book into a stage adaptation.  To avoid what I've done in the past (more on that in a moment) I wrote to him to ask permission to adapt his book for the stage.  I haven't heard back, yet...always a question:  do you ask permission first and wait or proceed and ask permission when you have something to show the author?  or...don't ask at all and just go ahead and do the damn thing.  I took that approach with Paul Fleischman's novel "Seedfolks".  Wrote an adaptation and staged it with my students.  I mean, who would think anyone would care what you did with 25 middle school students.  You show it to a few hundred audience members and then go onto the next show.  Well, how was I to know that some teacher at my school would have her students write to the author (all the sixth grade students at the school read his book) and some would mention our adaptation. Or that Paul Fleischman would be invited by this same teacher, 3 years later,  to come to our school during the exact week that I was remounting a production of this play, his book, sans permission.  And there he sat in the audience...watching an unauthorized production ....with 300 middle school students.  I sweated some serious bullets watching him watch the show, while running the sound board.
Well it turned out fine.  He was quite pleased.  He wrote to me and told me it inspired him to write his own adaptation--he even asked me if I could tell him the music I used for it-- he liked it so much.  And then the best thing:  He asked permission (you see he knew the "correct way") to use my opening sequence (which wasn't from his book) in his own adaptation.
But I think Paul (I'll call him that now) is unusual and was just happy to see students engaged with his work.   So, this time I decided to write for permission first, and then try my hand at adaptation.  But, if no permission is forthcoming, I'll go ahead and follow this advice:  'Don't ask permission, beg forgiveness'
Either way, for my storyteller friends, check out this book.  I think you'll like the way the author wove in and out of different Grimm tales, giving us a new way of looking at these wonderful, and gruesome
stories--and perhaps opens up possibilities for oral retellings.  It brought up my desire to work on a retelling of the Grimm tale Bearskin.  More on that in a future post.  For my theatre friends:  Do not adapt this book--I claim it.