Not only that, Neil Gaiman portrays gut-wrenching emotion in the father. Counterintuitively, this is what makes this story feminist — a story in which women are not put on a pedestal as mothers, where women have only one representation: self-sacrificing and emotional. In stories, men are often allowed to be just men, even when they have children. They are not judged so much on how effective they are as fathers. In this story, however, the father is the parent with the nurturing instinct, and is at the mercy of his wife’s terrible decisions rather than the other way around. We won’t have gender equality until we have as many bad mothers as there are bad fathers, I guess. Food In Fairytales

Carry out role-play activities linked to the story, e.g. hot seating / interviewing characters from the story. How are they feeling at particular points, or ‘Conscience Corridor’ activities – should Hansel and Gretel go into the gingerbread house?What might an ameliorated, more socially just version of your tale look like? Like Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel, it may be quite similar to the classic version, but with a few details altered. SEE ALSO Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald Art Nouveau German Childrens Book Hänschen im Blaubeerenwald LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. Is there a classic tale from your childhood which feel to you like some parts are missing? Perhaps one character doesn’t get a fair deal. I often feel that way about female characters in fairytales when retold by Perrault and Grimm; in the Victorian era, women were ideally stupid and innocent. Around this time step-mothers started to become most vilified. Beautiful people are portrayed to be good; ugly people are bad. If you enjoy Lorenzo Mattotti’s illustrations for Hansel and Gretel, you may also enjoy illustrations by Savva Brodsky. Savva Brodsky Illustrations for short stories by Alexander Grin, 1960s

An aloof, stern mother and her lonely son encounter an unemployed father and his friendly daughter as they walk their dogs in the park.Beautiful, profound and with lots to look at in Browne’s painterly tableaux. Nodelman then mentions the art of Tim Burton, which has been replicated by subsequent animators in films such as Paranorman. Anthony Browne is one writer/illustrator who does understand what this tale is really about, though he does go with something more like the Grimm modification rather than the original, oral tale. Note that the step-mother has not one but two mirrors in her bedroom, which is considered excessively vain, but apart from that, there’s the whole ‘witch/mother’ mirroring going on. CANNIBALISMWhat do you associate red shoes with? Perhaps you associate them with the film version of The Wizard of Oz, in which the bad witch is squished under the house, her ruby slippers poking out? Maria Tatar argues that although mothers did eat their children, it was generally only due to mental derangement caused by her own starvation. In medical/legal documents it was always a baby who was eaten rather than an older child. By that I mean, they made it horribly patriarchal. And we’ve been using their version ever since, sweetening it up a little, but the basic patriarchal message is the same: