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. 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? In Year 3, we have been enjoying reading Hansel and Gretel by Anthony Browne. We split the story into three parts; the beginning, the middle and the ending. We have discussed in small groups the features of a fairytale and how Browne’s version also includes these conventions.

He has also retold and illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1988), King Kong (1994), and Hansel and Gretel (1981); and illustrated books for other authors, including Ian McEwan, Sally Grindley and Janni Howker. But if Millions of Cats is comfortingly secure, it is not just because it emphasizes shape over line, pattern over energy; it is also because the shapes happen to be primarily rounded and curved ones—the sort of shapes we associate with softness and yielding. Such associations have an obvious effect on our attitudes to pictures. If you enjoy Lorenzo Mattotti’s illustrations for Hansel and Gretel, you may also enjoy illustrations by Savva Brodsky. Savva Brodsky Illustrations for short stories by Alexander Grin, 1960s 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? 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:

Little Red Riding Hood

Gretel then shoves the witch all the way in the oven and closes the door, leaving the old hag on Gas Mark 6 for two-and-a-half hours. The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online ( literature.at). Retrieved 2013-07-23. 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

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (MacRae, 1988) – an edition of the 1865 classic, highly commended for the Greenaway [11] [a] and winner of the Emil [15] I’m good at climbing trees, so I showed her how to do it. She told me her name was Smudge – a funny name, I know, but she’s quite nice. Then Mummy caught us talking together and I had to go home. Maybe Smudge will be there next time? A review of Hansel and Gretel using the picture codes to enhance the story and meaning of the illustrations. Escape from loneliness is a continual theme in Browne’s picture books; as are absent fathers, disconnected families and longed-for friendships. These themes are reinforced by the domesticity of his picture-book settings. His kitchens and bedrooms, streets and parks, are familiar to us; however, it is not always the cosy domesticity we expect, and neither are they the cosy family relationships we have come to know in picture-book fiction. In fact, they are often uncomfortable spaces, tinged with unhappiness and the threat of menace to come. This undercurrent of darkness and Browne’s deftness to deal with complex and difficult themes permeates his art and arguably gives his picture books their enduring appeal.Little Red Riding Hood also has cannibalistic elements which are sometimes sanitised. This tale is pretty much the only European tale in which a good — a good girl no less — is involved in cannibalism.

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. Paternal cannibalism is of a different nature and can be seen in The Juniper Tree (sometimes called The Almond Tree). In cases where the father eats his child in a fairytale, Tatar sees it as an expression of ‘biological ownership through incorporation’. The child can (in a strange sort of way) live on via being made into the father’s own body. The father in the Juniper Tree is not cast as good or evil in the same way fairy tale mothers are. Svetlana Kim – Hansel and Gretel COMPARE AND CONTRAST WITH HANSEL AND GRETEL What might an ameliorated, more socially just version of your tale look like? Like Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel, it may be quite similar to the classic version, but with a few details altered. SEE ALSO Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald 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: 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.Shameless plug: Compare with our own retelling of a classic fairytale, Lotta: Red Riding Hood. Of course, there are many other modern retellings of fairytales, and like ours, many of them are written for young adults and above, as were the original tales. (I mean pre-Grimm. The Grimm brothers needed to raise money, so published old tales as children’s stories, because children’s stories are what sold.) WRITE YOUR OWN