Hansel and Gretel

Once upon a time, there was a little house on the edge of a deep, dark forest. A very poor family lived in it. The father was a lumberjack, and the mother was a seamstress. They had two children named Hansel and Gretel. The father wasn’t home very often. He had to go to the king’s forest to chop down trees to make bridges for the kingdom. And as we all know, chopping down enough trees to build a proper bridge can take a very long time.

To save money, he would sleep on the ground in the forest. To stay in the dark forest at night all alone he had to be incredibly brave. Luckily he was a lumberjack, and they are very brave indeed. Every night, he would start a big fire to drive away the wild animals with leaping flames that crackled and danced in the dark. But even this didn’t feel nearly enough sometimes, such as when he heard the cry of a pack of hungry, howling wolves. As payment for his hard work, the lords let him take as much wood from the forest as he needed so that his family wouldn’t freeze in winter and could have enough heat to cook their dinner.

While father was away, mother would make clothes for the wealthy. She was an excellent seamstress, but because they couldn’t afford to buy a sewing machine, she had to sew by hand. Her fingers were all pricked as she often had to sew at night, by the light of the dim lamp. The needle would slip and prick her finger when she couldn’t see properly in the flickering light. During the day, mother took care of the household and kids. Everything fell upon her shoulders when father was in…