cover image HANSEL AND GRETEL

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Beni Montresor, . . S&S/Atheneum, $17 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-689-84144-6

Montresor, an internationally known set designer, presents the tale of the intrepid children as a kind of shadow puppet play. Sharp-edged paper-cutout silhouettes of the children stand stiffly in a succession of stark, monumental stage sets, the first one their ramshackle home and, later, the witch's abode, here represented by a castle rather than the edible house of the Grimms' tale. Montresor creates razor-sharp cutouts in colors that reverberate against their backgrounds with such intensity that the compositions sometimes seem to throw off heat. Yet the images themselves are often chilly: the siblings' skeleton of a house, with jack-o'-lantern eyes and a gaping mouth of a doorway; the Hansel and Gretel cut-outs laid sideways in a lonely forest asleep; the crenellated towers and jail bars of the witch's house. The text, centered on the left-hand pages across from the illustrations on the right, omits the wicked stepmother, but still contains plenty of spooky moments: "They knew that in the woods there was sometimes an evil monster, not to mention terrifying devils and witches. One of these witches, more wicked than the others, eats children." In the customary happy ending, Hansel and Gretel free a parade of paper-doll children, but Montresor's graphic formalism may lose readers on the way. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)