Hansel And Gretel At A Candy House

Two children stand shoulder to shoulder in front of a little cottage on this sheet. The boy is on the left in a buttoned shirt and short trousers, and the row of tiny buttons down his front is the fiddliest detail on the page. The girl on the right wears a dress with a scalloped hem and a pair of ankle socks above her shoes, and one of her hands is raised as though she has just spotted something. Behind and between them stands the cottage, its roof covered in rounded lumps of candy laid out in overlapping rows, with a tall arched door set into the wall below. Each of those candy lumps is a separate closed shape, so the roof alone can absorb half a dozen shades before anything else is touched. Round bushes crowd in at either side of the building. Look at the ground in front of the children and you will find two small oval pebbles dropped on the path, the detail that tells you which story this is. Leaving them white makes them read as stones. Coloring them dark makes them read as a trail, which is closer to the tale.