True, but they are beautiful, in my opinion, and if you're going to have to spend some time working on a text it helps if the text is something that you're willing to spend time on. Also, although the "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" use old-fashioned language, it's an old-fashioned spoken German, which means that in some ways they're closer to modern colloquial German than a lot of modern prose. They won't suit everyone but I'd definitely recommend that anyone learning German give them a try.

If you did want weird, how about learning German from the lyrics of Bach cantatas? :-)