Tag Archives: grimm’s fairy tales

Favorites from Students: Hansel and Gretel

ONCE upon a time there dwelt on the outskirts of a large forest a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children; the boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had always little enough to live on, and once, when there was a great famine in the land, he couldn’t even provide them with daily bread. One night, as he was tossing about in bed, full of cares and worry, he sighed and said to his wife: “What’s to become of us? How are we to support our poor children, now that we have nothing more for ourselves?”

“I’ll tell you what, husband,” answered the woman, “early tomorrow morning we’ll take the children out into the thickest part of the wood; there we shall light a fire for them and give them each a piece of bread; then we’ll go on to our work and leave them alone. They won’t be able to find their way home, and we shall thus be rid of them.”

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Disney’s Snow White

A lot has been said against the “Disney-fication” of fairy tales, and for the most part I agree.

However.

Check out the introductory sequence of Snow White, which was released in 1937. It’s dark, dramatic, and exquisitely animated. It leaves The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast in the dirt. The evil queen is genuinely disturbing and, well, evil. The peacock throne is a nice touch.