Hansel and Gretel
by Neil Gaiman, Lorenzo Mattotti (Illustrator)
DETAILS:
Publisher: Toon Books
Publication Date: October 28, 2014
Format: Hardcover
Length: 56 pgs.
Read Date: August 12, 2023
What’s Hansel and Gretel About?
This is the story of Hansel and Gretel almost straight from the Brothers Grimm—given a quick shine by Gaiman. There’s nothing particularly Gaiman-esque about the writing or the approach to the story. It’s a pretty decent and straightforward approach to the story.
The Art
In the spirit of “If you can’t say anything nice….”, I’m tempted to leave a few lines of blank space here and move on. I don’t get it. Really. I just don’t understand what Mattotti was going for here. The pictures are spread over two pages, and most of those pages are black. There are bits of white to help you get an image or the shadow of an image, but again—it’s just black. The kind of black that would’ve threatened to bankrupt printers just a couple of decades ago.
Maybe a quarter to a third of each two-page spread was interesting—but the rest. Ugh.
Call me a Philistine here…but I just don’t see why someone would bother.
I’ve looked at Mattotti’s website, and I like a lot of what I saw there…but this was a swing and a miss.
So, what did I think about Hansel and Gretel?
So, the text was okay. The art was disappointing. Overall, I give this a “meh.” If this were a person’s first exposure to the story—it’d work well. And honestly, if that’s what someone uses it for—I’d probably rate this higher.
But for someone wanting a little bit of that Gaiman magic applied to this familiar tale? It just doesn’t deliver.
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