Hansel & Gretel
by Neil Gaiman
art by Lorenzo Mattotti
Toon Graphics, 2014. 53 pages.
Starred Review
This book is put out by a publisher of graphic novels and is in the size of a large graphic novel. But there are no speech bubbles here. What you do have are large double-page spreads of black-and-white (mostly black) very dark paintings alternating with double-page spreads of text.
The pictures are dark and sinister, and the story is dark and sinister. Like all fairy tales, it has power. The word painting of Neil Gaiman combined with the art of Lorenzo Mattotti gives this familiar tale new impact.
Here’s the paragraph after the old woman invites Hansel and Gretel into her house:
There was only one room in the little house, with a huge brick oven at one end, and a table laden with all good things: with candied fruits, with cakes and pies and cookies, with breads and with biscuits. There was no meat, though, and the old woman apologized, explaining that she was old, and her eyes were not what they had been when she was young, and she was no longer up to catching the beasts of the forests, as once she had been. Now, she told the children, she baited her snare and she waited, and often no game would come to her trap from one year to another, and what she did catch was too scrawny to eat and needed to be fattened up first.
This story is far too sinister for the very young. Those who read this story will be confronted with evil — and children who triumph over it.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/hansel_and_gretel.html
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