Hansel and Gretel Are Dumped Like Unwanted Kittens

“Dad, where are you going?” Mr. Woodsman didn’t answer, so the two kids turned up the volume. “DAD! Wait for us!” The two youngsters, a tween girl and a boy of around nine, started after their father. Maybe he’d changed his mind about the day of picnicking he’d drug them into the middle of the woods for. “We’ll stop bickering, we promise!” yelled the boy, Hansel, though it was a promise many times broken.

“I’ll stop whining about the walking!” yelled Gretel, a rotund blonde girl who was unlikely to grow into anything but a circle because of her love of cakes and pies. She hated any kind of exercise, and a day of hiking in the boring, stupid woods hadn’t interested her in the least until her stepmother, Hellen, handed her a large basket of food which she insisted on carrying…