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Hansel and Gretel
The classic fairy tale that celebrates Hansel and Gretel's strength and spirit over the malevolence of the world around them. Set in Atlantic Canada.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1812
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
June 27, 2010
I think this is the first ever book I read.
February 26, 2024
u can never go wrong when u have witches, cults or cannibalism in a children's story <3
May 29, 2025
This rating is for the edition retold and illustrated by Ian Wallace.
October 14, 2014
Read it on an app that plays background music. It was fun.
Evoked memories of my mother narrating the story to me and my brother at bedtime. One of those first stories, along with young Krishna's adventures with his friends, that I visualized in my head and fell asleep to dreaming them.
This one is cute.
Evoked memories of my mother narrating the story to me and my brother at bedtime. One of those first stories, along with young Krishna's adventures with his friends, that I visualized in my head and fell asleep to dreaming them.
This one is cute.
January 3, 2012
Very sad but entertaining children's story.
May 22, 2018
This was one of my favorite stories when I was a kid, I would watch the movie as often as I could. Reading it as an adult, it is still a pretty solid story that I can still enjoy.
August 17, 2018
Im flying back to my childhood
August 28, 2018
A childhood favorite of mine
February 8, 2021
This is a classic story of two abused children who live each other. Although they escape their abusive mother, that are then challenged to save themselves from a cruel witch.
June 6, 2025
Hansel y Gretel:La historia sigue a dos hermanos, Hansel y Gretel, que se pierden en el bosque y caen en las garras de una bruja malvada.
La historia comienza con un padre y una madre que, debido a la pobreza, deciden abandonar a sus hijos en el bosque. Hansel y Gretel, sin embargo, escuchan el plan y se preparan para encontrar su camino de regreso a casa. La bruja, que vive en una casa de dulces y golosinas, engaña a los hermanos y los captura.
La historia comienza con un padre y una madre que, debido a la pobreza, deciden abandonar a sus hijos en el bosque. Hansel y Gretel, sin embargo, escuchan el plan y se preparan para encontrar su camino de regreso a casa. La bruja, que vive en una casa de dulces y golosinas, engaña a los hermanos y los captura.
August 24, 2025
#Binge Reviewing My Previous Reads #Classic fairy tales with Modern Implications
Hansel and Gretel, as retold and illustrated by Ian Wallace, resists domestication. That is to say, the text and image together do not simply repeat a Grimmian narrative of danger, abandonment, and survival, but instead amplify the fissures already latent in the tale: the fault lines of hunger, desire, parental betrayal, and the economy of consumption.
In Wallace’s hands, the story becomes doubly legible—both as a children’s myth and as an allegory of late-capitalist precarity. One cannot read his Hansel and Gretel innocently. To do so would be to collude with the very structures of abandonment the tale encodes.
The beginning—parents who cannot feed their children and thus contemplate their disposal—has always haunted interpreters. In Wallace’s retelling, the illustrations intensify this act of negation, foregrounding the materiality of hunger rather than obscuring it under folkloric haze. From a postmodern perspective, this moment of parental betrayal signals the disintegration of the supposed sanctity of the nuclear family, revealing it as a provisional contract, contingent upon scarcity and survival.
Foucault might say the family here is a micro-biopolitical apparatus, rationing life and death within its cramped domestic borders. The children’s disposability is not exceptional but systemic: their bodies are calculated against the economy of bread.
Hansel’s act of leaving stones, then crumbs, as markers of return is at once tactical and tragic. Stones endure, crumbs dissolve—thus the tale articulates the instability of memory under duress. The child’s attempt at self-archiving collapses into erasure. Derrida’s hauntology echoes here: every trace laid down is already marked for disappearance, every index haunted by its failure. To navigate the forest is to navigate the archive of loss, where no breadcrumb leads home.
In Wallace’s illustrations, the forest looms not as a backdrop but as a subject, a green-black density of signifiers, overdetermined and yet unreadable.
The witch’s house—gingerbread, sugar, gleaming sweets—is often read as the fantastical inversion of hunger: an abundance so exaggerated it becomes grotesque. But in a 21st-century register, it is not merely a magical dwelling but an allegory of commodity fetishism, an edible façade that conceals the violence within.
The house is not a home but a trap, consumption designed as seduction. Wallace’s retelling stages this with particular intensity: his illustrations render the sweets glistening, excessive, almost nauseating. Desire and revulsion are collapsed. One is reminded of Baudrillard: in the land of hyperreality, signs are consumed rather than objects, and the witch’s house is precisely such a sign—its candy walls do not feed but entrap.
Gretel’s ultimate act—pushing the witch into the oven—might be celebrated as emancipation, a proto-feminist reclaiming of agency. But postmodern reading hesitates: is this liberation or the repetition of the same logic of consumption that ensnared them?
The witch, who consumes children, is herself consumed by fire. Violence is not abolished but displaced, metabolised within the same economy of devouring. The children emerge not cleansed but implicated. Indeed, Wallace’s art captures Gretel’s moment of triumph not as a simple victory but as a fraught necessity; her body is drawn with tension, as if aware she has not escaped the cycle but reproduced it.
The treasure taken from the witch’s house—jewels and gold—is the surplus of death, capital extracted from cannibalism. Returning home with this wealth, Hansel and Gretel are no longer abandoned children but bearers of commodities. The father welcomes them; the absent mother (or stepmother, depending on the version) is dead, and the family is restored. But the restoration is not innocent; it is lubricated by blood and sugar. Wealth arrives not from honest labour but from violent encounter.
For 21st-century readers, this resonates uncomfortably with global capitalism: prosperity built upon hidden exploitation, sweetness inseparable from suffering. The fairy tale does not merely end happily; it ends with the normalisation of surplus extracted from death.
Wallace’s retelling, precisely because it appears so faithful, destabilises. His illustrations, at once luminous and ominous, refuse to let the reader dwell only in fantasy. Instead they insist upon the material: hunger’s pain, sugar’s lure, fire’s violence. In a postmodern frame, this is crucial.
The story cannot be read as an allegory of individual resilience alone; it is also an allegory of systemic precarity, of children as subjects of abandonment, and of desire as a trap.
For the 21st century, Hansel and Gretel offers a diagnosis of multiple crises. In ecological terms, the forest becomes the ungovernable outside, at once threatening and sustaining. In economic terms, the parental betrayal mirrors neoliberal austerity: families cut loose what they cannot afford, while the children wander in landscapes of scarcity.
In cultural terms, the witch’s candy house embodies consumerism’s cruel optimism—delight that conceals devastation.
What does it mean, then, to tell this story now, in Wallace’s restrained yet haunting visual idiom? It means recognising that childhood itself is precarious, that security is provisional, and that sweetness is suspect. It means interrogating how systems of abandonment are naturalised as “just fairy tales”.
And it means acknowledging that Gretel’s act of survival is not pure triumph but entanglement in the very cycle she sought to escape.
To call Hansel and Gretel a story of resilience is too simple. Wallace’s version invites a darker, more difficult reading: resilience as complicity, survival as repetition, family as fragile assemblage bound together by both love and betrayal. In this sense, the tale is not merely for children but for adults caught in systems that continue to abandon, consume, and restore with the same paradoxical logic.
Hansel and Gretel walk out of the forest carrying jewels, but what they truly carry is the burden of history: that survival is never clean, that every treasure is stained, and that every homecoming is haunted by the oven’s fire.
Hansel and Gretel, as retold and illustrated by Ian Wallace, resists domestication. That is to say, the text and image together do not simply repeat a Grimmian narrative of danger, abandonment, and survival, but instead amplify the fissures already latent in the tale: the fault lines of hunger, desire, parental betrayal, and the economy of consumption.
In Wallace’s hands, the story becomes doubly legible—both as a children’s myth and as an allegory of late-capitalist precarity. One cannot read his Hansel and Gretel innocently. To do so would be to collude with the very structures of abandonment the tale encodes.
The beginning—parents who cannot feed their children and thus contemplate their disposal—has always haunted interpreters. In Wallace’s retelling, the illustrations intensify this act of negation, foregrounding the materiality of hunger rather than obscuring it under folkloric haze. From a postmodern perspective, this moment of parental betrayal signals the disintegration of the supposed sanctity of the nuclear family, revealing it as a provisional contract, contingent upon scarcity and survival.
Foucault might say the family here is a micro-biopolitical apparatus, rationing life and death within its cramped domestic borders. The children’s disposability is not exceptional but systemic: their bodies are calculated against the economy of bread.
Hansel’s act of leaving stones, then crumbs, as markers of return is at once tactical and tragic. Stones endure, crumbs dissolve—thus the tale articulates the instability of memory under duress. The child’s attempt at self-archiving collapses into erasure. Derrida’s hauntology echoes here: every trace laid down is already marked for disappearance, every index haunted by its failure. To navigate the forest is to navigate the archive of loss, where no breadcrumb leads home.
In Wallace’s illustrations, the forest looms not as a backdrop but as a subject, a green-black density of signifiers, overdetermined and yet unreadable.
The witch’s house—gingerbread, sugar, gleaming sweets—is often read as the fantastical inversion of hunger: an abundance so exaggerated it becomes grotesque. But in a 21st-century register, it is not merely a magical dwelling but an allegory of commodity fetishism, an edible façade that conceals the violence within.
The house is not a home but a trap, consumption designed as seduction. Wallace’s retelling stages this with particular intensity: his illustrations render the sweets glistening, excessive, almost nauseating. Desire and revulsion are collapsed. One is reminded of Baudrillard: in the land of hyperreality, signs are consumed rather than objects, and the witch’s house is precisely such a sign—its candy walls do not feed but entrap.
Gretel’s ultimate act—pushing the witch into the oven—might be celebrated as emancipation, a proto-feminist reclaiming of agency. But postmodern reading hesitates: is this liberation or the repetition of the same logic of consumption that ensnared them?
The witch, who consumes children, is herself consumed by fire. Violence is not abolished but displaced, metabolised within the same economy of devouring. The children emerge not cleansed but implicated. Indeed, Wallace’s art captures Gretel’s moment of triumph not as a simple victory but as a fraught necessity; her body is drawn with tension, as if aware she has not escaped the cycle but reproduced it.
The treasure taken from the witch’s house—jewels and gold—is the surplus of death, capital extracted from cannibalism. Returning home with this wealth, Hansel and Gretel are no longer abandoned children but bearers of commodities. The father welcomes them; the absent mother (or stepmother, depending on the version) is dead, and the family is restored. But the restoration is not innocent; it is lubricated by blood and sugar. Wealth arrives not from honest labour but from violent encounter.
For 21st-century readers, this resonates uncomfortably with global capitalism: prosperity built upon hidden exploitation, sweetness inseparable from suffering. The fairy tale does not merely end happily; it ends with the normalisation of surplus extracted from death.
Wallace’s retelling, precisely because it appears so faithful, destabilises. His illustrations, at once luminous and ominous, refuse to let the reader dwell only in fantasy. Instead they insist upon the material: hunger’s pain, sugar’s lure, fire’s violence. In a postmodern frame, this is crucial.
The story cannot be read as an allegory of individual resilience alone; it is also an allegory of systemic precarity, of children as subjects of abandonment, and of desire as a trap.
For the 21st century, Hansel and Gretel offers a diagnosis of multiple crises. In ecological terms, the forest becomes the ungovernable outside, at once threatening and sustaining. In economic terms, the parental betrayal mirrors neoliberal austerity: families cut loose what they cannot afford, while the children wander in landscapes of scarcity.
In cultural terms, the witch’s candy house embodies consumerism’s cruel optimism—delight that conceals devastation.
What does it mean, then, to tell this story now, in Wallace’s restrained yet haunting visual idiom? It means recognising that childhood itself is precarious, that security is provisional, and that sweetness is suspect. It means interrogating how systems of abandonment are naturalised as “just fairy tales”.
And it means acknowledging that Gretel’s act of survival is not pure triumph but entanglement in the very cycle she sought to escape.
To call Hansel and Gretel a story of resilience is too simple. Wallace’s version invites a darker, more difficult reading: resilience as complicity, survival as repetition, family as fragile assemblage bound together by both love and betrayal. In this sense, the tale is not merely for children but for adults caught in systems that continue to abandon, consume, and restore with the same paradoxical logic.
Hansel and Gretel walk out of the forest carrying jewels, but what they truly carry is the burden of history: that survival is never clean, that every treasure is stained, and that every homecoming is haunted by the oven’s fire.
October 24, 2013
DRA:? Grades:3-5
When a mean step mother convinces their dad to abandon them in the woods, Hansel and Gretel are forced to fend for themselves and find their way back home. The first time they were left in the forest, they managed to go back home because of the shinny pebles Hansel left on the path. However, the second time the children used bread to mark the path and the birds ate all the crumbs, leaving Hansel and Gretel unsure how to get back home. The starving siblings run into a house made of bread and sugar. While feasting on it, they meet an old woman who is nice to them at first but later show her true colors. The siblings fortune is on the witche's hand. Ane they need to defeat her before they can ever see home again.
When a mean step mother convinces their dad to abandon them in the woods, Hansel and Gretel are forced to fend for themselves and find their way back home. The first time they were left in the forest, they managed to go back home because of the shinny pebles Hansel left on the path. However, the second time the children used bread to mark the path and the birds ate all the crumbs, leaving Hansel and Gretel unsure how to get back home. The starving siblings run into a house made of bread and sugar. While feasting on it, they meet an old woman who is nice to them at first but later show her true colors. The siblings fortune is on the witche's hand. Ane they need to defeat her before they can ever see home again.
March 30, 2014
Hansel and Gretel are two children from a poor family. Their parents could barely make ends meet. They went out to pick berries but they some how ventured into the forbidden North Woods where demons and witches are said to live. Hansel The breadcrumbs that the baker gave her she dropped them to help them find their way back but a hungry crow ate the breadcrumbs. This story will keep your attention for sure. I think that children will be engaged by this story.
This could be used to teach a lesson on what to do if your lost.
This could be used to teach a lesson on what to do if your lost.
July 9, 2014
Originally read in a collected Grimm Brothers book. I'd love to know how many different versions of this I've now seen/heard/watched?
January 2, 2016
This is the first book I ever read in my life. I was six years old.....
December 15, 2025
Rating: 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I read Hansel and Gretel and rated it 4 stars. It is a beautifully written story that touches the heart. What I loved most was how it highlights the deep bond between siblings. It shows how, when a sister feels low, her brother knows exactly how to make her smile—even in the worst situations. And when the brother faces difficulties, the sister, though emotional, finds the strength to support him and help him through. This mutual care and understanding are something every sibling can relate to.
The story also delivers a powerful message: greed is always a curse. No matter how much money, power, or status a person has—even if they are a king—greed eventually leads to destruction. A greedy person will one day lose everything they value.
Overall, it’s a meaningful and heartwarming story with simple yet powerful lessons, which is why I truly enjoyed reading it.
I read Hansel and Gretel and rated it 4 stars. It is a beautifully written story that touches the heart. What I loved most was how it highlights the deep bond between siblings. It shows how, when a sister feels low, her brother knows exactly how to make her smile—even in the worst situations. And when the brother faces difficulties, the sister, though emotional, finds the strength to support him and help him through. This mutual care and understanding are something every sibling can relate to.
The story also delivers a powerful message: greed is always a curse. No matter how much money, power, or status a person has—even if they are a king—greed eventually leads to destruction. A greedy person will one day lose everything they value.
Overall, it’s a meaningful and heartwarming story with simple yet powerful lessons, which is why I truly enjoyed reading it.
November 3, 2021
Había escuchado la historia cuando era pequeña, pero es la primera vez que la leo y me sorprende lo oscura que es.
No me termina de convencer la definición de los personajes adultos.
Tenemos a una madrastra mala, pero el padre es un "pobre hombre" que se deja manipular y abandona a sus hijos (en mi punto de vista, un mal padre también).
De todas formas, sé que es una historia antigua y la sociedad de aquel entonces era muy distinta (y es por esto que no criticare el cuento).
El cuento está bien pero no me gustó del todo.
No me termina de convencer la definición de los personajes adultos.
Tenemos a una madrastra mala, pero el padre es un "pobre hombre" que se deja manipular y abandona a sus hijos (en mi punto de vista, un mal padre también).
De todas formas, sé que es una historia antigua y la sociedad de aquel entonces era muy distinta (y es por esto que no criticare el cuento).
El cuento está bien pero no me gustó del todo.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2020
Assez dramatique comme conte
June 11, 2020
This is my always favorite tale. Wise siblings together versus a wicked witch.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
December 7, 2020idk
January 4, 2021
Children’s library
May 31, 2021
I want to know how the stepmother died. Hopefully she was ether witch. I said it.
October 13, 2021
This was a favorite as a child. Definitely a bit dark for children and doesn't have super clear messages for children, but still an exciting tale to spook kiddos!
Read
February 7, 2022to-read
February 7, 2022
Will always love this one but very sad
July 12, 2022
I've watched the movie
May 19, 2023
Just beautiful
September 1, 2023
Tenía que ser madrastra 😭
October 2, 2023
This book is great. I think that it is great for teaching kids to beware of strangers. It is also very entertaining for young children. Because it is a folktale it is also somewhat nostalgic.
October 5, 2025
Of course this is an old classic that was around way before I was born and I'm OLD now!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews