Hansel and Gretel

Materials and Resources:
 

1. Hansel and Gretel. Dir. Robert Eggers. Palehorse Productions, 2005. Film.

2. Peterson, Andrea L. No Rest for the Wicked. Icarus Falls, 2003. Web. 14 June 2011. http://www.forthewicked.net/

3. Glennon, William. Hansel and Gretel. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Playhouse Press, c1964. Print.

Descriptions of Resources:

1. This live-action film, in black and white, is a silent movie depicting the traditional telling of Hansel and Gretel. There are only slight differences, one of them being that the children decide to run away to the woods when they get punished for their disobedience and troublemaking, as opposed to the more traditional evil-stepmother-telling-the-father-to-get-rid-of-the-children story.

2. No Rest for the Wicked is a webcomic that combines many different Grimm’s fairy tales into one storyline. The Hansel and Gretel portion comes into play in chapter three, entitled “A Modest Proposal”, which is a nod to Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay of the same name. Here, the story is interpreted entirely differently. A village has fallen on hard times, and so parents give their children to a witch living deep in the heart of the forest so the parents will not starve. This witch, due to severe mental instability, calls all the boys Hansel and all the girls Gretel, after her own children who have been dead for many years. It is revealed that she killed and ate her own children after going insane, and the experience has changed her from a normal human woman to a lifeless shell of an evil being.

3. This is a play written in three acts. The witch has a bird and a gnome as her helpers, and the witch puts Hansel and Gretel’s mother under a spell that causes her to abandon Hansel and Gretel in the woods. The rest of the story plays out very much the same, with rhyming banter and such added in for theatrics.

Lesson Plan for Number Five: 

“Graphic Fairy Tales” Middle School

Art Goals

• To interpret a fairy tale in the form of a graphic novel or comic

• To learn the process of making comics

Content Objectives

The students will each choose an old fairy tale, one that hasn’t been turned into a popular movie, and create a comic around it. During the process, they will design characters and scenery based on the descriptions from the story. They will need to be aware of and use all elements of design in the creation of their comics.

Motivations

The students will research fairy tales that have been turned into comics or graphic novels. In class, they will all share what did and did not work in each comic, as well as discuss how they could use what they’ve learned in the making of their own comics.

Materials Needed

• Drawing paper (8 ½”x 11”)

• Pencils (2H)

• India ink pens, various sizes

• Rulers

• Erasers

• White-out/ white ink

Resources

• Library/ internet

Process/ Procedure

1. Read and discuss fairy tale comics
2. Choose a fairy tale to read
3. Script out the fairy tale (i.e. dialogue, action cues, settings)
4. Make thumbnail drafts of the comic: very loose sketches and panel layouts
5. Get into groups of three or four and discuss each other’s thumbnails
6. Edit thumbnails based on the critiques within your groups if necessary
7. Bring thumbnails to the teacher to discuss
8. Start work on the comic!
9. Graph out the pages and panels
10. Sketch out the contents of the panels, including the text [Note: When dealing with speech bubbles, write out the text FIRST, then draw the bubbles around the text.]
11. Ink the panels and the speech bubbles first, then move on to inking the contents of the panels and the text.
12. After the ink has dried, erase all pencil lines and fix inking mistakes using white-out or white ink.
13. Sign and date the bottom of each page and pass it in. These will all be scanned into a computer and compiled into a bound collection for each student in the class.