Hansel and Gretel a personalised book with your child as the hero

Once upon a time, at the edge of a great forest, there lived a poor woodcutter with his two children, a boy called Hansel and a girl called Gretel. Times were hard, and some nights there was only a crust of bread for supper.

One day the woodcutter said, "Tomorrow we must go deep into the forest to find good wood to sell. It's a long way, so we'll start early."

Gretel was a thoughtful girl. That evening, when the moon came up, she slipped outside and filled both her pockets with the pale white pebbles that lay in the yard. "Just in case," she said to herself.

The next morning they walked into the forest. Every few steps Gretel dropped a pebble behind her, and the pebbles lay shining on the path like little white buttons. When her pockets were empty, she crumbled her piece of bread and dropped the crumbs instead.

Deep in the forest, their father lit a fire and said, "Sit here and keep warm while I chop wood. I'll come back for you." Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire and listened to the sound of his axe, far away among the trees, until they fell asleep.

When they woke up, it was dark, the fire had gone out, and the sound of the axe had stopped. Somewhere out in the trees their father was searching for them, but the forest was so big that he could not find the place again.

"Don't worry," said Gretel. "We'll follow the crumbs back to the pebbles, and the pebbles will take us home."

But when they looked for the crumbs, there were none. A flock of little birds had come down behind them in the afternoon and eaten every single one.

So Hansel and Gretel were lost in the forest. They walked all night and all the next morning, getting hungrier and more tired with every step. Then, at midday, a snow-white bird sang to them from a branch and flew on ahead, and they followed it into a clearing.

There stood a little cottage. Its walls were made of gingerbread, its roof was tiled with cake, and its windows were made of clear sugar.

"Oh!" cried Hansel, and he broke off a piece of the roof and began to munch. Gretel nibbled at a sugar window.

Then a thin voice called from inside:

"Nibble, nibble, like a mouse, who is nibbling at my house?"

The door opened, and out came an old woman leaning on a stick. Hansel and Gretel jumped, but she smiled at them sweetly.

"Oh, you poor dears," she said. "Come in, come in. I'll feed you up."

She piled the table with pancakes and milk, apples and nuts and cakes of every kind, and she made up two little beds with white sheets. But when Gretel said they must be going home in the morning, the old woman would not hear of it.

"Stay," she said. "Stay and eat. You're far too thin."

The old woman was not as kind as she looked. She was a witch, and she had built her sweet little house to tempt children inside. The next morning Gretel woke up to find that Hansel had been shut in a wicker cage in the yard.

"I'm going to feed him up until he's nice and fat," said the witch, rubbing her hands, "and you are going to do the cooking."

Gretel's heart thumped, but she knew better than to let the witch see she was frightened. She cooked and cleaned and said nothing, and all the time she was thinking.

The witch's eyes were very poor. Every morning she hobbled out to the cage and said, "Hansel, stick out your finger, so I can feel if you're getting fat."

So Gretel found a thin twig and slipped it through the bars to her brother, and every morning Hansel held out the twig instead of his finger. The witch felt it and grumbled, "Still as thin as a stick! You're not fattening at all."

At last, one morning, the witch lost her patience. "Fat or thin, I've waited long enough," she said. "Gretel, climb into the oven and see if it's ready for baking."

The oven was huge and black and still cold. Gretel looked at it, and she understood the witch's trick.

"I don't know how to get in," she said, as innocently as she could. "Will you show me?"

"Silly goose," snapped the witch. "The door's big enough. Look, even I can get in." And she bent down and crawled inside to show her.

Quick as a flash, Gretel swung the heavy iron door shut and latched it tight. The witch banged and shouted inside, but the latch held fast.

Gretel ran to the cage and opened it. "Hansel, come out! We're free!"

Hansel jumped out, and they hugged and danced round the yard. Then, behind the stove, they found an old wooden chest full of pearls and bright stones, and they filled their pockets with as many as they could carry. They left the witch in her cold oven, still shouting, and ran off into the forest. Long afterwards they heard that she had wriggled out at last and gone away over the mountains, and that she never built another sweet little house again.

After a while they came to a wide stretch of water, with no bridge and no boat.

"We'll never get across," said Hansel.

But a wide white duck was swimming nearby, and Gretel called to it:

"Little duck, little duck, can you see? Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee. There isn't a bridge and there isn't a boat, so carry us over on your back as you float."

The duck came paddling over and carried them across one at a time, because, as Gretel said, two would be too heavy for one little duck.

On the other side the forest began to look familiar. Night fell, the moon came up, and there on the ground, shining white in the moonlight, lay the first of Gretel's pebbles. Then another, and another. They followed the pebbles all the way through the trees, until they saw a lamp lit in a window. It was their own window, where their father had left the lamp burning every night since they were lost.

Their father wept for joy to see them. And when they emptied their pockets, pearls and bright stones rolled across the table, so that the cupboard at home was never bare again.

And the three of them lived together happily ever after.