Hansel and Gretel

Near a great forest there once lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children, Hansel and Gretel.One year the harvest failed, and soon there was so little food in the house that the woodcutter lay awake at night, worrying how he could feed his family.His wife told him there was only one answer: they must lead the children deep into the forest the next morning and leave them there.

Hansel and Gretel lay awake too, and heard every word through the thin wall.Gretel cried softly, but Hansel told her not to worry, crept outside, and filled his pockets with small white pebbles that glimmered in the moonlight.

The next morning, as the family walked into the forest, Hansel quietly dropped one shining pebble after another along the path.Deep among the trees, the parents lit a fire, told the children to rest, and slipped away, saying they would return before evening.When night fell and no one had come back, Hansel took his sister’s hand, followed the pebbles glowing under the full moon, and led her safely home by morning.

Before long the family was hungry again, and this time the mother locked the door at night so Hansel could not gather more pebbles.He crumbled his piece of breakfast bread in his pocket instead, and scattered the crumbs behind him as the family walked deeper into the woods than ever before.But when the children woke alone that night and looked for the trail, every single crumb was gone — the forest birds had eaten them all.

Hansel and Gretel wandered through the forest for three days, hungry, tired, and hopelessly lost.At last they came upon a strange little house with walls of bread, a roof of cake, and windows made of clear sugar.Starving, they broke off pieces of the roof and the window to eat, until the door opened and a bent old woman invited them inside with a warm smile.

The kind old woman fed them a wonderful supper and gave them soft beds, but she was secretly a wicked witch who had built the house only to trap hungry children.The next morning she locked Hansel in a small cage in the yard and forced Gretel to cook rich meals to fatten him up.Every few days the witch checked Hansel’s finger to see if he was fat enough, but Hansel cleverly held out a thin old bone instead, and the witch’s poor eyesight fooled her every time.

After weeks of waiting, the impatient witch decided to cook Hansel that very day, no matter how thin he still seemed.She heated the oven and told Gretel to climb in first to check if it was hot enough — but Gretel guessed the trick and asked, “How do I do that?”When the impatient witch pushed forward to show her how, Gretel gave her a hard shove into the oven and quickly bolted the iron door shut.The witch was trapped for good, and Gretel raced to free her brother from his cage at last.

Searching the witch’s house, the children found chests overflowing with pearls and jewels, and filled their pockets with as much treasure as they could carry.On their way home a friendly white duck carried them one at a time across a wide stretch of water they could not cross alone.At last they saw their father’s house in the distance and ran the rest of the way, throwing their arms around his neck.Their father wept with joy — he had never had one happy hour since leaving them in the forest — and with the witch’s treasure, the three of them never went hungry again.