Story 48: Hansel and Gretel Americanized Adaptation RandomHouseBook

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Simplified version of the original Brothers' Grimm tale but with quite a few small word changes and a different trick also both children in this version are depicted by the artist as blonde.

Hansel and Gretel

At the edge of a large forest there once lived a woodcutter with his wife and two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl, Gretel. They were always very poor and had little to live on. But at last a terrible famine came to the land, and the woodcutter could not even provide food for his family.
One night he lay awake in bed, worrying over his troubles.
"What is to become of us?" he said to his wife. "How can we feed our poor children when we have nothing for ourselves?"
"I'lI tell you what," she answered. "Tomorrow morning
we will take the children out to the thickest part of the forest.
We will light a fire and give them each a piece of bread. Then we will go about our work and leave them there. They won't be able to find their way home, and so we shall be rid of them."
"No, I could never find it in my heart to leave my children alone in the forest," said the woodcutter. "The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces."
"What a fool you are!" the woman said. "Then we must all four die of hunger. You might just as well plane the boards for our coffins at once." And she gave him no peace until he consented.
But the two children had not been able to sleep for hunger, and so they heard what their stepmother had said.
Gretel wept bitterly. "All is over for us now."
"Be quiet, Gretel," said Hansel. "Don't cry. I'll find a way to save us."
When the woodcutter and his wife were asleep, Hansel got up, put on his jacket, and slipped out the door. The moon was shining brightly, and the white pebbles around the house gleamed like silver coins. Hansel stooped down and gathered as many pebbles as his pocket would hold.

Then he went back to Gretel, "Go to sleep now," he said. we will not perish in the forest." And he lay down and slept
himself.
At daybreak, before the sun had risen, the woman came to wake them. "Get up, you lazybones," she ordered. "We are going into the forest to fetch wood." She gave them each a piece of bread. "Here is something for your dinner, but do not eat it right away, for it's all you'll get."

(Lumna10's first Author note this takes place coincidentally all day in the Brothers' Grimm bread is there noonday meal not their dinnertime meal. So there's your first strong difference between both translations)

Gretel took the bread and put it under her apron because
Hansel's pockets were filled with pebbles.
At length they all started out for the forest. When they had gone a little way. Hansel stopped to look back at the cottage. and he did it again and again.
„What are you doing?" his father asked. "Take care and keep
up with us.
"Oh, Father," said Hansel, "I am looking at my white cat.
It is sitting on the roof, saying good-bye to me."
"Little fool!" the woman said. "That is no cat. It's the morning sun shining on the chimney."
But Hansel had not been looking at the cat at all. Each time he stopped, he had dropped a white pebble on the ground to mark the way.

In the middle of the forest where the trees grew dense, their father made a fire to warm them

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In the middle of the forest where the trees grew dense, their father made a fire to warm them. When it was blazing, the woman said, "Now lie down by the fire and rest while we go and cut wood. We will soon come back to fetch you."

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