(++++) JUST GRIM ENOUGH

Hansel and Gretel. Retold by Stephen King. Pictures by Maurice Sendak. Harper. $26.99. 

     Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1892 opera, Hansel and Gretel, significantly expands on the original fairy tale collected by the brothers Grimm, giving it a religious gloss and introducing a few oddities, such as a preoccupation with the number 14: there are 14 eggs brought home in one scene, and 14 protective angels in another. Eliminating some supernatural portions of the original story, notably the duck that helps the children escape from the dark forest, the opera brings in some fairy-tale elements of its own, including the Sandman and Dew Fairy. And one crucial plot point of the original tale – the mother’s determination to get rid of the children permanently – is turned around in such a way that both the mother and father are positive characters who try to rescue Hansel and Gretel and eventually celebrate their deliverance with them. 

     For a 1997 production of the opera by Houston Grand Opera, Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) created sets and costume designs – and nearly three decades later, Sendak’s illustrations inspired horror master Stephen King to take a new look at the original Grimm story and produce his own version of it. Suitable for children (the book is recommended for ages six and up), the King/Sendak Hansel and Gretel straddles the original narrative and the opera’s version of it, managing to be mildly dark in tone without being inappropriately scary for children today. 

     The original tale’s evil mother becomes an evil stepmother here – a bow to more-recent expectations of familial strife – and is sent away at the book’s end by the father, although in the original story she is simply dead. Some of the opera’s angels are retained (four, not 14, seen circling the moon in a Sendak illustration of a dream that Gretel has). And – this is where things get interesting – Sendak handles the witch of the forest with considerable aplomb. Her house is not made of candy, as it commonly is in modern retellings of the tale, but is “built of bread and covered with cakes,” as the Grimms’ language translates, although the windows of clear sugar are sweet enough. Sendak also shows rows of gingerbread children outside the house – those being, in the opera, children baked into gingerbread by the witch. 

     What Sendak does especially well, and what King picks up on very neatly, are the themes of transformation and of evil that seems good – two frequent underpinnings of the Grimms’ Märchen and other fairy tales. Sendak produces not one but two dream scenes, the second more intense than the first, in which Hansel sees the not-yet-met witch flying on a broom and carrying a sack of frightened children. And he rings changes very effectively on the witch’s house itself, showing it transformed (after Hansel and Gretel have gone inside) into a leering, toothy, monstrous-looking creature that is bordered by unhappy-looking gingerbread children and has a front path that is actually a long pink tongue. 

     If he were writing for adults, King would surely extend these visual elements into something overwhelmingly creepy. But to his credit, he pushes his prose here to only a moderate degree. He gives the witch a name, Rhea, and writes that when the children turn away from her, they “did not see the kindly face turn into that of an ugly old hag with yellow, half-blind eyes, snaggle teeth, and a wart on her nose.” (In the Grimm tale, witches “have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near” – an even scarier notion.) King also explains that once the children are indoors, the house “changed and showed its real face, which was terrible indeed,” including a “rotten banana nose” and candy canes by the door that “sprouted teeth.” Then King pushes matters further than they are taken either by the Grimms or by the opera, saying that after Hansel and Gretel fall asleep in the witch’s house, “the pleasant aromas became the smells of rotting fruits and vegetables [and] the walls started dripping with slime.” 

     What King does so well here is to accept Sendak’s illustrations while enlarging upon the opportunities they offer for bits of extra creepiness. Thus, the witch, after being pushed into the oven, “did shriek as her filthy hair and the wart on her nose caught fire!” And she ends up as gingerbread – shown that way by Sendak although not specifically described that way by King. Unlike the opera, this King retelling does not have the gingerbread children restored to human form through Hansel’s timely use of the witch’s magic wand; but the book does end with Hansel and Gretel stuffing their pockets with the witch’s treasure of gold and precious stones and finding their way home to their loving father. The “happily ever after” ending is inevitable and approximates the original Grimm conclusion, although it is not quite so close to the finale of the opera, which is a proclamation that God brings aid when the need is greatest. No matter: the tale of Hansel and Gretel has gone through many metamorphoses over the centuries, and surely neither the operatic version nor the King/Sendak book will be the last. The book is, however, a thoroughly enjoyable and handsomely produced retelling that will surely appeal to modern children and, just perhaps, will get them interested in exploring some other fairy tales handed down from many years ago – although it will not necessarily entice them into opera.