Hansel and Gretel

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Some, like Wanda Gag, use black-and-white’s potential for heavy contrast to create more restfully decorative effects. A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother’s death and grows up vain and spoiled. This is a portrait of a powerful cannibalistic woman, the bad mother, who is directly juxtaposed with the good mother figure. Hungry and desperate the two children stumble upon a house made out of sweet treats and fall victim to a witch who entraps and eats children.

As a result, children have planned and written retelling of this fabulous story including a beginning and middle. This story is about two young children Hansel and Gretel who live in the middle of the forest with their woodcutter father and their evil stepmother. George Devereaux, citing “Multatuli (1868),” pseudonym of novelist Edward Douwes Dekker, reports that during medieval famines and “even during the great postrevolutionary famine in Russia” the “actual eating of one’s children or the marketing of their flesh” occurred. Many fairy tales have their roots in a much darker past, but these origins are watered down to make the tales more wholesome or moral. As for most Anthony Browne books, the visuals within the book provide a lot for children to engage with.

The children in the tale not only kill off the bad mother but they also leave behind the oral phase. The mirror adds to the impression of vanity, and we will subconsciously conjure up Snow White and the magic mirror in that tale. In this retelling, Gaiman offsets this interpretation by making Hansel — but not Gretel — privy to an overheard midnight conversation between the mother and the father. On the other hand, good black-and-white pictures that emphasize line over shape can add energy to long books in which details of emotion and of setting might otherwise retard the action.

The beaming light in the background of the page where Gretel is collecting some water, symbolises hope and security. Above all, this fairy tale reminds us that even today, there are kids being abandoned in dark forests. The reader should dedicate some time looking at the pictures if they want to fully understand all the little, hidden details they contain. Note that the step-mother has not one but two mirrors in her bedroom, which is considered excessively vain, but apart from that, there’s the whole ‘witch/mother’ mirroring going on. It may seem overly picky but it is a common portrayal in fairytales and must surely enforce views that children have particularly when the story is naturalised in this way.This tale is pretty much the only European tale in which a good — a good girl no less — is involved in cannibalism. A mysterious soldier appears and makes strange remarks about what beautiful dancing shoes Karen has. The exoticism and richness of the sugary food in the fantasy represent not only the riches of the nobility but also their ability to avoid the hunger and drudgery of the peasants’ daily life. For example, whenever a character meets a character in a ‘forest’ (whether the forest is symbolic or not), the audience is put in mind of wicked cannibalistic witches. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives.