Hansel and Gretel

8-10 min read
16 pages

Hansel and Gretel, the Brothers Grimm tale to read aloud. The breadcrumbs do not work, and the house in the clearing is made of sugar.

There was a woodcutter with two children, Hansel and Gretel, and a wife who was not their mother, and one winter there was no work and very little bread.

Hansel lay awake and heard them talking through the wall. «We'll take them into the forest tomorrow,» the woman said. «There isn't enough for four.» The woodcutter said a great many things, and in the end he said all right.

Hansel went out to the step and filled his pockets with white pebbles, and told Gretel nothing, because she was asleep and there was no use frightening her twice.

In the morning they all walked into the forest. Every few steps Hansel stopped and dropped a pebble behind him, and when the fire was lit and the grown-ups had gone, he was not worried at all.

The moon came up and the pebbles shone along the ground like a thrown necklace, and the children followed them home and were back by dawn.

The second time there were no pebbles, because the door had been bolted. So Hansel put his slice of bread in his pocket and crumbled it behind him instead, a little at a time, all the way in.

The crumbs were gone by the afternoon. The birds of that forest had had a thin winter too.

They walked for three days. They ate berries, and then they ate nothing, and on the third morning they came out into a clearing and saw the house.

It was made of gingerbread, with a roof of cake and windows of clear sugar. They were past being careful. Gretel broke off a piece of window and Hansel took a handful of roof, and they sat down in the path and ate.

«Nibble, nibble, little mouse,» said a voice from the door, «who is nibbling at my house?» And an old woman came out, leaning on a stick, and she was so kind to them that they went inside.

There was milk and pancakes and apples and two clean beds, and they slept as though they had been asleep for a week. In the morning the old woman was not kind any more, and Hansel was in a cage in the yard.

She was a witch, and her eyes were too weak to see across a room, but her nose worked perfectly. She had built the house to catch children and she had caught a good many.

Every day she made Gretel cook, and every day she went out to the cage and said «Hold out your finger, let me feel if you're fattening.» And every day Hansel held out a chicken bone he had kept, and she felt it and could not understand it.

After four weeks she lost patience. «Fat or thin,» she said, «he goes in the oven tomorrow. Gretel, get the fire going and climb in and tell me if it's hot enough.»

Gretel looked at the oven, and at the witch standing beside it, and at the space between them. «I don't understand how,» she said. «Show me.» And the witch, who was in a hurry, leaned in — and Gretel put both hands flat on her back and pushed, and shut the iron door.

She let Hansel out of the cage. In the witch's chest they found pearls and gold, and they filled their pockets and Gretel's apron, and walked until they came to water, and a white duck carried them over one at a time. Their father was on the step of the house. The woman had died in the autumn, and he had been alone since, and he did not stop crying for a long while after they were inside.

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Text source: Plot by the Brothers Grimm (1812), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Hansel and Gretel characters

Hansel: The older brother, who plans: white pebbles the first time, breadcrumbs the second, and a dry bone held out through the cage bars.
Gretel: Cries for most of the story and then ends it. She is the one who pushes the witch into the oven while her brother is still locked up.
The stepmother: The mother in the 1812 edition, changed to a stepmother later. She dies while the children are away, and the tale does not say how.
The father: A woodcutter who agrees twice and grieves twice. The story forgives him at the end, which many readers do not.
The witch: Red-eyed and short-sighted, which is why the bone works. The gingerbread house is bait, and she says so.
The white duck: Carries them back across the water, one at a time — it will not take both. A small, strange detail that almost every retelling drops.

Where «Hansel and Gretel» comes from and who wrote it down

The original Little Red Riding Hood

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel characters

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