Gretel and Hansel

In this wordless retelling of the classic fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, Bee Waeland re-deploys the same strategy she used in her first picture book, The Three Bears and Goldilocks. In her new book, Gretel and Hansel, Waeland inverts the familiar fairy tale tropes and signals this inversion by reversing the order of the names in the title. With this simple reversal, her audience is told to expect something new and different, and that is exactly what Waeland has created.

In this retelling, Hansel and Gretel are not frightened waifs or victims, abandoned in a dark and threatening forest by impoverished but heartless parents. Rather, the two children accompany their cheerful father into the woods and entertain themselves while he industriously cuts firewood. The children scamper after a fox, follow it into the trees, and amuse themselves feeding their lunch to hungry birds. Suddenly, they enter a clearing and see a house made of gingerbread and decorated with gumdrops, lollipops, and peppermints, and, of course, they set about breaking off bits and pieces and eating them. When the resident witch appears, she is dismayed but kindly and hospitable, inviting the children inside for cake. A fire is burning in the fireplace, a black cat purrs, and the cottage is cozy and welcoming. However, the greedy children are rude and gluttonous, devouring everything in sight and leaving the witch’s tidy cottage in a shambles. Finally, the witch has had enough of her badly behaved guests and uses her magic wand to transform Hansel into a frog. Gretel and her amphibious brother run off through the trees and find their worried father.

The illustrations are big, bright, and colourful, using simple lines and shapes to convey actions and emotions. Though wordless, the message is clearly communicated: rude and thoughtless behaviour can have unfortunate negative consequences! The witch, rather than being malevolent or threatening, is sympathetic and patient, but her tolerance is eventually exhausted, and she exerts a magical punishment on the ungrateful children. Waeland probably provides a more relevant message than the much darker nineteenth century version recorded by the Brothers Grimm, with its themes of child abandonment, murder, and cannibalism, and this retelling is certainly much much less disturbing.

The morality of traditional fairy tales is often troubling – the young and attractive are usually rewarded and the old or ugly are punished, regardless of their behaviour. In her first two wordless picture books, Waeland has playfully righted the scales of justice, and I expect she will continue to create more amusing inverted fairy tales for the very young.