Mystery
The storybooks are incarnations of dumbfounding mystery: “The problem, of course, was where old Mr. Deauville got his storybooks.Once a year, on a morning he could not predict, he would arrive at his shop to find a box of books waiting inside. Four brand-new fairy tales, one copy of each. Mr. Deauville would hang a sign on his shop door: “Closed Until Further Notice.” Then he’d huddle in his back room day after day, diligently copying the new tales by hand until he had enough books for every child in Gavaldon. As for the mysterious originals, they’d appear one morning in his shop window.” The mysterious feature of the books entrances the readers who crave to read them punctually. The readers anticipate that by reading the books, they will unravel obscurities vis-à-vis the abductions. Mystery is a stratagem which upsurges the craving for novel storybooks. Had mystery been disregarded in the books, readers’ interest in them would have vanished.
Maliciousness
Agatha’s existence is a categorical contrast of an archetypal fairy tale: “For as long as Agatha could remember, she’d had a talent for making people go away. Kids fled from her like a vampire bat. Adults clung to walls as she passed, afraid she might curse them. Even the grave keepers on the hill bolted at the sight of her. With each new year, the whispers in town grew louder—“witch,” “villain,” “Evil School”—until she looked for excuses not to go out. First days, then weeks, until she haunted her graveyard house like a ghost...” The society dishonourably vilifies Agatha due to her form and her proclivity for the graveyard. Although she is a conventional lass, she is exposed to prejudice to disseminate the orthodox Fairy tale storyline. Had she been tangled in malevolent undertakings, then the disparagement would have been admissible. She is a wretched scapegoat for a society that overrates Fairy tales which necessitate villains to be unqualified. Her undeserved denigration exposes the shallowness of fairy narratives.
