A nice quick read, good children's book in that spooky Neil Gaiman way, the illustrations are beautiful ink and very captivating to look at, lots of movement in the pieces.
Even though I am not the target audience for this read (probably geared more towards children or adults with children in their lives) I was still able to enjoy this version of a classic story. It's a bit hard for me to review this plot-wise because I'm not well versed on the original fairy tale and how this version differs, but I think they are both similar enough. Hansel and Gretal get lost in the woods after their father leaves them and the birds ate their breadcrumb trail leading home. They come across a house made of cake and candy and the witch who lives inside feeds them to make them fatter so she can cook them. I will say there are a couple of very minor plot points I know were added after the original was created that makes it a bit more grounded in our reality, and they were great inclusions.
When it comes to Neil Gaiman's children's literature this is a great addition, especially with the story and illustrations of Coraline, and the whimsical world of Mirrormask, this fits right in with his style of children’s storytelling.

When I saw Neil Gaiman had written a new version of the old fairy tale Hansel and Gretel on Netgalley, I was excited to see what he would do with. Happily, at least to me, he stays very close to the original. This is no Disneyfied version, no friendly animals or dancing candlesticks there to help the two children. Gaiman, instead, retains all the elements that gave me shivers when I read it as a child - war, famine, two children abandoned by their parents, and of course, cannibalism. Yikes!

And adding to the horror of the tale are the amazing stark ink drawings by Lorenzo Mattotti, the black colouring relieved only by patches of grey and white. In the end, though, both Gaiman’s usual excellent prose and Mattotti’s drawings emphasize the truth inherent to all fairy tales that no matter how dark, grim and frightening the world can become, there is always hope and the chance of a happy ending.

I received an arc of this book from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review

I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan, so I was excited to get this ARC. It’s a beautiful retelling of a classic fairytale. Dark in all the best ways. I still hate the children’s mother—she’s worse than I remember! The art was beautiful too, it really brings you into the darkness of the story! Well done!

Huge thanks to Astra Publishing House, Toon Books,, and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Neil Gaiman is the perfect modern interpreter of one of the darkest of Grimms’ fairy tales. Originally published in 2014, I somehow missed this book so it’s wonderful that it is being reissued. As usual, Gaiman’s prose is pitch perfect. Already in the beginning there is a subtle sense of unease which develops into the horror story we all know. He also weaves the horrors of war into the tale, which makes perfect sense and adds a unique element to the story.

The black and white illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti reflect this horror in their stark and brutal beauty. They appear to be just random paint strokes at times but a careful viewing will reveal all kinds of hidden things. I suspect a careful re-reading of Gaiman’s text would also reveal all kinds of hidden things. Starvation, parental abandonment, cannibalism...I do wonder if this story is appropriate for children at all, and yet it has remained a classic.

The author and illustrator notes, as well as background information were very enlightening and fascinating as well.

Thank you NetGalley and Astra Publishing for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review.

Real fairy and folktales usually have some scary characters and events, and this is no exception. Gaimen's retelling provides the perfect horror story for the upper elementary and older.
Thank you to Astra Publishing, an imprint of TOON Books, and Netgalley for the digital arc of the 2023 paperback edition.

A straightforward "Hansel and Gretel" retelling by Neil Gaiman to go along with the stark, haunting illustrations of Lorenzo Mattotti. Gaiman goes back to the original Grimm (grim) story, with the mother suggesting they get rid of the children, no evil stepmother in sight. There is no new ground broken in this slim story, but it is a solid recounting of the tale and Mattotti's illustrations are compelling. I have seen this listed as a graphic novel, which is why I requested it (I need to complete that genre for a book category challenge), and this is definitely not a graphic novel, rather an illustrated story, so be aware of that. Thank you to NetGalley, Astra Publishing House, and TOON Books for a digital review copy.

LOVED THIS!!!
always wanted to read Hansel and Gretel because i heard it was dark but didn’t know it was THIS DARK 🫣 and the illustrations in the book are kind of unique which makes it more dark!!!!

thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the copy.

You know when you see a book on the shelf and think, how did I not know this existed? This is Neil Gaiman's retelling of the Grimms' story*, but specifically one inspired by Lorenzo Mattotti's illustrations for it, already published on the Continent in a version with no Gaiman involvement, credited to the Grimms and Mattotti**. And those illustrations are dark. This is not a forest where you'd want to be the woodcutter, never mind his lost child; this is a place of primal terror where you suspect that if the old woman hadn't got them, something worse would have. Which is not how I normally picture the story. The forest is vast and wild, for sure, and it holds scary things, but it is not scary in and of itself. Compare and contrast Arthur Rackham's illustration of it, included in the backmatter here, where the gingerbread house sits invitingly in a sylvan idyll. I couldn't help but be reminded of Simon Schama's great Landscape & Memory, where he argues that at least since the legions were lost in the Teutoburg Forest, the deep woods have tended to feature in German culture as a place of renewal, and in Italian culture as a place to be feared. Meaning the Grimms filtered through Mattotti is a very different mood to just the Grimms. And Gaiman's response certainly leans into that. It's not a full-scale reinvention a la Confessions of a Trickbaby, or his own The Sleeper and the Spindle; a lot of the time, you wouldn't even necessarily know you were reading Gaiman, at least not until you encounter a line such as "the far bank, where the trees were thick, and old, and gnarled into shapes that looked like angry giants, frozen into time". But it definitely brings out the darkness in the story. Which might seem a strange thing to say about a story of abandonment and cannibalism, but that's fairytales for you, isn't it? The afterword delves briefly into this, as well as offering the fairytale behind the fairytale, in which young Dortchen could only tell the Grimms this story in secret, because her father was an ogre, but ended up living happily ever after with Wilhelm Grimm. In so far as we can ever quite trust that ending, anyway.

*So tempting at this point to do one of those reviews which just breathlessly and unhelpfully recounts the plot.
**Which of course leads to the dilemma: combine the Goodreads records, or not? Especially when, as it stands, different lead authors are credited on the two, and rightly so. When does a translation or retelling become a separate work? Does Hamlet only have one record for Quarto, Folio, Bad Quarto and the usual composite? If so, should it? Yes, I may have an instant answer for every version of the trolley problem I've ever heard, but this is the sort of question which preoccupies me.

This is a very straight forward retelling of the classic tale that doesn’t really change anything from the source material. But the illustrations that capture the haunting and scary aspects of the story are very well done and my favourite part of the book.

I’m not sure who will actually like this book version of Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel fairytale. As a retired children’s librarian, I was drawn to find out how Neil Gaiman would retell this old German story. It turned out to be a “very grim” take on the old story, but I expected that from the famous Neil Gaiman. But WHY did the illustrator give us such dark (almost all black) inked pictures? I did read the end discussions about the history of the fairytale and comments from the author and the illustrator to figure this out. I even looked back at all the illustrations and still couldn’t see the appeal of them.