Hansel and Gretel

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Let’s face it: The tale itself is basically terrifying. Anthony Browne, with his postmodern approach to its retelling, does not shy away from the terror. Later, Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Matotti created an even darker version. What does the Cat, Dove and Snow White bird signify? Or the white pebbles? What does the colour white represent? (Chance of hope and happiness, sense of innocence) In earlier retellings, it is Hansel who has all the bright ideas. Hansel realises what the parents/step-mother has done to them — abandoned them in the woods. By comparison, Gretel seems naiive and even stupid. 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. The sweetening of this tale started with the Grimm brothers, who needed to make money to support their collection hobby, so they rewrote some of the horrible tales into versions they considered appropriate for middle class children. Japanese Story With Similar Plot Points

Oz Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel attempts to reimagine the folktale ‘Hansel & Gretel’ as an empowering coming of age story for its titular female heroine, complete with an ecoGothic stylistic flare. However, the film is just that: style over substance. While it seeks to, on the one hand, prioritise the feminist development of Gretel and, on the other, foreground its moody natural environment, it ultimately falls short on both counts. The overall result is a rather overwritten and poorly executed ‘girl power’ film which fails to unnerve or excite us with its ecoGothic aesthetic Folktale Failure: Gretel & Hansel by Shelby Carr Carry out role-play activities linked to the story, e.g. hot seating / interviewing characters from the story. How are they feeling at particular points, or ‘Conscience Corridor’ activities – should Hansel and Gretel go into the gingerbread house? The billowing tree and off-kilter palings of the foreground fence remind me of similar techniques used by Mattotti in Hansel and Gretel. This way of drawing makes for a creepy vibe. By that I mean, they made it horribly patriarchal. And we’ve been using their version ever since, sweetening it up a little, but the basic patriarchal message is the same:Frames-Every illustration is framed in a rectangular frame and interestingly, on each double spread there is a small framed image and a larger framed one. These illustrations seem to support and complement each other. Anthony Browne's Hansel and Gretel, adapted from the translation by Eleanor Quarrie, has a distinctly contemporary feel. This is enhanced by the humorous illustrations: the woodcutter, for example, has a television set in his home, and the cruel stepmother, trips daintily along in high heels and a striking yellow coat, a cigarette hanging from her mouth. These help to bring a lighter note to this otherwise traditionally dark tale. Perry Nodelman in Words About Pictures finds the curved forms comforting as much as creepy, and speaks of the comfort of a predictable, oft-told tale: The old woman in the house is ‘as old as the hills’. Can you think of other similes to describe her / the other characters in the story?

A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother’s death and grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a rough pair of red shoes; now she has her adoptive mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. After Karen repeatedly wears them to church, they begin to move by themselves, but she is able to get them off. One day, when her adoptive mother becomes ill, Karen goes to a party in her red shoes. A mysterious soldier appears and makes strange remarks about what beautiful dancing shoes Karen has. Soon after, Karen’s shoes begin to move by themselves again, but this time they can’t come off. The shoes continue to dance, night and day, rain or shine, through fields and meadows, and through brambles and briers that tear at Karen’s limbs. She can’t even attend her adoptive mother’s funeral. An angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel’s reply. Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, even with Karen’s amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches, and teaches her the criminals’ psalm. Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church so people can see her. Yet her amputated feet, still in the red shoes, dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking she is at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing red shoes bar the way. Karen gets a job as a maid in the parsonage, but when Sunday comes she dares not go to church. Instead she sits alone at home and prays to God for help. The angel reappears, now bearing a spray of roses, and gives Karen the mercy she asked for: her heart becomes so filled with sunshine, peace, and joy that it bursts. Her soul flies on sunshine to Heaven, where no one mentions the red shoes. Wikipedia summary The Children of Famine — exemplifies the plight of families unable to feed their kids. The mother becomes unhinged and desperate when she is unable to feed her own children. Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing -Juliet Blake has the rights to turn this version of Hansel and Gretel into a film. (See Juliet Blake at IMDb, in which we learn the film stars Josh Hutcherson and Elle Fanning.) from Hansel & Gretel, Susan Jeffers- illustrator, pub. 1980 Anastasia Arkhipova – Hansel and Gretel COMPARE WITH For A Similar Art Style Willard […] sees the children’s home (or mother’s body) as a place that becomes hostile to them, expelling them into the forest and denying them food. They try to return but are rejected and thrust out to fend for themselves. The children find a house in the woods that appears to offer them what they desire (a return to the mother’s body) but it turns out to be a trap. Thus “the dangers of returning home are clearly outlined.” The children, Willard argues, must deal with the image of the split mother so that they can attain “a fully integrated image of the mother”. They do this by committing matricide, an act which Kristeva argues is the clearest path to autonomy. By killing the witch/bad mother, the children are free to return to their father, but they take with them the “best parts” of the split mother figure, symbolically represented by the jewels. […] The symbolism of food and the theme of eating (including cannibalism) in the story have profound psychic resonances with infantile anxieties relating to the mother which is arguably why the story continues to be popular. Voracious Children: Who eats whom in children’s literature The Role Of The Father and ‘Mothers In Fridges’? Daniels further explains the double/duplicitous/split nature of the (step)mother/witch with the help of some 20th C psychoanalysis: I did enjoy this story and found it evoked some very strong emotions. It is certainly worth reading to Key stage one or two children and would be a very good stimulus for a PSHE lessons on keeping safe, responsibilities and wellbeing. It would also provide plenty of opportunities for a philosophy for children lesson. Illustrations really helped with this spooky tale, really enjoyed the ending where the children found their home and father waiting for them. Has with most Anthony Browne books the illustrations are quirky and quite different however, forms a lot of talk and discussion points that you could have with a class of children.

The Brothers Grimm wrote the original fairy tale. Can you find out what other stories they wrote? If you could interview them today, what questions would you like to ask them? Anthony Browne has often illustrated Hansel and Gretel to be looking away from the reader, this allows the reader to experience what the characters are feeling and put their emotions in the place of the characters. The opponent was originally a mother, not a stepmother. The Grimm brothers obviously thought that having your blood mother turn on you was too scary. They did retain the shortened form of ‘mother’ in some passages though.Nodelman then mentions the art of Tim Burton, which has been replicated by subsequent animators in films such as Paranorman. In Hansel and Gretel, the mother figure is split … and clearly has cannibalistic desires. from Carolyn Daniel’s book Voracious Children: Who eats whom in children’s literature She is not a good housewife (when the implication is that a good housewife is also a good mother, and that being a good housekeeper is the job of the woman. Hansel and Gretel and Child Development When children defeat a witch in a fairy tale this signifies separation from mother — a necessary stage in psychic development. Anthony Browne is an internationally acclaimed author and illustrator of children's books with over forty titles to his name including Gorilla and Willy the Wimp. He was born in Yorkshire and studied graphic arts at Leeds Art College, working as a medical illustrator and an illustrator of greetings cards before his first book was published in 1976. He has gone on to win numerous awards including the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Use the speech within the text to create a play script. Could you perform this with some friends or use puppets?It is interesting to consider the ending of the tale in terms of psychoanalytic notions of child development. The children’s task is to escape the clutches of the devouring mother and to proceed from the oral phase to the oedipal stage and a meaningful relationship with their father. They live in her house for a month while she feeds Hansel on “the very best food” and waits for him to get fatter. Hansel, then, partakes of the good breast while Gretel, who “got nothing but grab shells” to eat, is denied it. They are clearly in the oral, pre-oedipal phase. By threatening to eat Hansel, the witch/bad mother clearly intends to incorporate and psychically obliterate him. Gretel kills the witch/bad mother by pushing her into the oven so that she is “miserably burned to death”. The threat of incorporation she poses is thus neutralized. Look at the different shapes in the illustrations. How many squares / rectangles / circles (etc) can you find?