Illustrated Breadcrumbs
Hansel and Gretel by Stephen King (Scribner, 2025)
Reviewed by Brody Eldridge
If you ask someone to name a fairy tale, it is likely they might say “Hansel and Gretel,” among a few choice others. The version of Hansel and Gretel, as modern folk know it, was put to paper by the Brothers Grimm. There are many iterations of a story similar to the Hansel and Gretel that we know, which appeared throughout Europe in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance era.
Now Stephen King teams up with Maurice Sendak (posthumously) to produce a new edition of this famous fairytale: Hansel and Gretel. It seems like the beginning of a joke: the king of horror and a legend of children's literature walk into a bar. Turns out they have quite a bit more in common than initially thought. Sendak's illustrations were produced for a production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel opera. King has provided the text. It’s not altogether new territory for either. Sendak also produced art for Mozart's The Magic Flute. King has also previously dabbled in children's literature, including his horror children's book Charlie the Choo-Choo (2016). In terms of this team up, it works.
King writes in the introduction that he was most taken by two of Sendak's illustrations. The first is of the witch riding a broom and carrying a sack of children on her shoulders, whisking the kids away to an awful fate. The second is of the witch’s house, its facade depicted as a literal face, complete with a nose, tongue, mouth, and teeth. This latter picture is significant mostly because it represents the theme which King hammers home in his storytelling: "deception." In the tale, the broom maker's wife deceives her husband by convincing him to agree to leave his two children alone in the woods to die. Her argument is that it is a better fate for the kids than starving in poverty. Of course, King depicts her hypocrisy as she feasts on fine food like meat, while distributing poor meals, like chunks of bread, to the two children. Then there is the deception of the witch. The witch deceives the children by initially appearing as a kind, old woman. King describes her appearance and face in terms which denote a correlation to virtue. How can a warm old woman really be evil? Even the witch's house, with its face as Sendak draws it, deceives the children by presenting its candy for their delight. These facades wither away, and eventually the witch shows her true face: an ugly face of evil.
This Hansel and Gretel does not break new ground. It has long been a trope in literature that “good,” “kindly,” “virtuous” people are “good looking,” and that the “villainous” and “evil” look ugly. This assumed intrinsic connection between appearance and character, or really appearance as an outward manifestation of character, is not always helpful. In Shakespeare's Richard III, Richard is "determinèd to prove a villain" (1.1.30) because of his "deformity" (Shakespeare depicts Richard as a hunchback). In the Victorian era, appearance and character were scientifically linked. Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso proposed that criminals looked atavistic, having a genetic predisposition for crime as the result of a reverse evolution. The physical depiction of Dickens’s villains followed suit. The witch in Hansel and Gretel falls in line with this long tradition and the physical depiction of the witch remains the same in King’s telling.
Who is this story for? Perhaps parents who are fans of King and want to introduce Hansel and Gretel to their kids. Maybe fans of Sendak. King's prose here has the occasional "Kingian" flare, but a short and simple story like Hansel and Gretel does not have much room for reinvention, or at least not much reinvention is offered in the 48 pages.
The question, "who is this for?", drives at a larger dilemma at the core of children's literature. Scholar Jacqueline Rose argues in her foundational text for children’s literature criticism, The Case of Peter Pan, that "children's fiction is impossible" (1). Impossible in that authors of children's literature mostly write about children and solely write for children. In children’s literature, "the adult comes first (author, maker, giver) and the child comes after (reader, product, receiver)" (1-2). Children do not write children’s literature. Children as represented in "kids’ lit" are constructions of what the adult thinks the child should be, not what the child is in reality. Rose writes that "if children’s fiction builds an image of the child inside the book, it does so in order to secure the child who is outside the book, the one who does not come so easily within its grasp" (2). "Kids’ lit" might really be for the adult.
Many younger readers also enjoy horror. There have long been Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, it seemed like dystopian young adult fiction was at a high with the horrifying settings of The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and the Divergent series. Today there are creepypastas (such as Slenderman in the early 2010s) and video games like 2014's Five Nights at Freddy's. Much more recently, kids and teens are familiar with analog horror and things like the "backrooms."
Horror provides a framework to engage with something terrifying from the safety and comfort of a reading chair. The genre also includes the final confrontation of the monster/murderer/the horror, and, eventually, triumph over it. A scary story is one way to empower children to face their fears. In fact, there are flares of horror in a great deal of children's literature. It is hard to imagine a child meeting Voldemort's macabre presence in Harry Potter without some terror. Perhaps even the terrifying snake within the Redwall series instills some chills within the child reader. Horror and children's fiction need not be diametrically opposed, nor have they been.
In the present, scary portions of books may help children face their fears. In the past, fairy tales often sought to firmly establish fears in children, for their protection. These tales were for adults, who needed more ways to offer instruction. They were for children, who needed guidance. The entertainment value helped both sides. The ultimate audience of King and Sendak’s Hansel and Gretel may seem somewhat unclear, but perhaps that is because it seeks to speak to both adults and children. After all, we mostly know King for his writing for adults and Sendak for his illustrations for children. And we all know the story of Hansel and Gretel.
King and Sendak walk into a bar: they meet like old friends.
Brody C. J. Eldridge graduated in 2024 from Palm Beach Atlantic University with a BA in English. He was a 2024-2025 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award winner for the Republic of Georgia. He is now pursuing a Master of Philosophy in English Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his research focuses on AI-generated art and its relationship to contemporary and conventional literature.
