1st Edition
Reading Children’s Fairytales Inside the Gingerbread House
Preface Harry Oulton, Mette Lindahl-Wise, Vicky Macleroy and Emily Corbett
Introduction Jack Zipes
Section 1: Theoretical Perspectives
01. Silently Taking up Space: Gretel Retells
Alice Penfold
02. A Word after a Word is Power: Fairy Tale Misogyny Reinforced and Overthrown
Mette Lindahl-Wise
03. Using Critical Race Theory to Explore the Potential of Children’s Texts as Counternarratives
Seraphina Simmons-Bah
04. Defamiliarising the Forest: An Eco-gothic Reading of ‘Hansel and Gretel’
Sara Shahwan
05. Translating and Transforming ‘Hansel and Gretel’
Jack Zipes
06. The Hourglass of Adaptation
Harry Oulton
Section 2: Multimodal Approaches
07. The Fairy Tales Live On: Marketing ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and Other Tales to a Young Adult Audience
Emily Corbett
08. Exploring the Transgressive, Taboo and Far Out in a Graphic Novel of ‘Hansel and Gretel’
Vicky Macleroy
09. Feeling the Story: A New Materialist Approach to Exploring an Embodied Reading of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ in The Singing Bones
Helen Jones
10. Hip Hop Hansel and Gretel
Christian Foley
11. Entangled Adaptations: Gretel Redesigned
Sam Holdstock
Section 3: Personal and Creative Responses
12. Approaching ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Inside Out
Michael Rosen
13. Using ‘Hansel and Gretel’ to Nurture Creative Healing and Augment Psychic Realities
Francis Gilbert
14. ‘Hansel and Gretel’ – Sustaining Stories and the Ache for Home in Red Leaves
Sita Brahmachari
15. We'll Leave The Light On For You
Anna Dempsey
16. Hanif and Gazal
Ardashir Vakil
Biography
Mette Lindahl-Wise is a children's literature PhD researcher at Goldsmiths. Her research focuses on the representations of females (children and adults) in the Carnegie Winners. A central component of her PhD is action research with a group of teenage girls to understand how they read and perceive these representations. She holds an MA in Anglo-American Literary Relations from University College London and an MA in Children’s Literature from Goldsmiths. Mette has published several articles on her research and is also an Associate Lecturer on Goldsmith's Children’s Literature MA programme.
Harry Oulton is currently in the final year of his creative writing PhD and is an associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. His YA novel is an adaptation which combines elements from 15th-century letters, a Robert Louis Stevenson novel from the 19th century and a family biography from 2004 to create a piece of original fiction. Harry worked at the BBC and Granada for over 20 years, including stints as a script editor, drama producer and ultimately executive producer of the BAFTA-nominated The Great Train Robbery. He has written and published three middle-grade novels, a book of writer’s prompts, short fiction, articles on adaptation and three award-winning short films.
Vicky Macleroy is a Professor of Language and Literacy, Head of the MA Children’s Literature programme (2021–2025) and Director of the Research Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London (2016–2025). Her work focuses on linguistic diversity, multimodality and children’s/Young Adult literature; literacy and digital storytelling; language development, poetry and multilingualism; and activist citizenship and transformative pedagogy. Underpinning her research is a commitment to research methodologies that embrace collaborative and creative ways of researching. Vicky is co-director of an international literacy project ‘Critical Connections Multilingual Digital Storytelling’ (2012-ongoing) that uses digital storytelling to support engagement with language and literacy.
Emily Corbett is a children’s and YA literature specialist with particular interest in the British book market and paratextual materials. Emily serves as General Editor for The International Journal of Young Adult Literature. Her monograph In Transition: Young Adult Literature and Transgender Representation (2024) was published with the University Press of Mississippi.
