Little Critter Hansel and Gretel

 

Little Critter Hansel and Gretel: a lift-the-flap book by Mercer Mayer, 2010.

 

Variations:

 

Not surprisingly, this book has the most radical changes to the story that I've yet seen. Of their own volition, Hansel and Gretel happen to be taking a walk in the woods, when they are warned by a black bird to turn back. They ignore him and go to the witch's sweetie house, but instead of eating it, they ring her doorbell. She feeds them enchanted food and later puts Hansel into the dungeon with the usual plans to fatten him up. Gretel tricks her into helping retrieve a bucket from the well, and pushes her in. The evil witch emerges grumpy and dripping, but here comes the children's father, who has been searching for them all along. They go home, leaving the witch stuck in her well. There is no verse used and the bird provides brief running commentary on the action.

 

This book uses the heavier cardboard pages appropriate to a lift-the-flap title. Hansel and Gretel are cute, bucktoothed furry creatures readers will recognize from any of the Little Critter series books. The red-eyed hag in the woods appears to be an alligator or a dragon in a typical black witch's outfit, including peaked hat. Kids can lift the flaps to find things like the witch's candy house, Hansel sleeping in a sack, a mouse and a crumb in an otherwise empty breadbox and more. 

Hansel and Gretel illustrated by Dorothee Duntze

Hansel and Gretel by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Anthea Bell,  illustrated by Dorothee Duntze, 2001.

 

Variations:

• Mentions God
• The one who wants the children taken to the forest is their mother, not a stepmother
• Hansel drops pebbles but says he is turning back to look at a white kitten on the roof
• Children follow a white bird to the witch's house
• House is "built of gingerbread and roofed with cake, and the windowpanes were made of clear sugar."
• Witch promises no harm will come to them
• Hansel is locked in a shed instead of a cage
• Children ride a white duck across the water to get home
• Mother has died

Verse:

"Nibble nibble mousie,
Who's nibbling at my housie?"

"The child of the sky,
the wind blowing by."

"Here by the water, little duck,
Hansel and Gretel are out of luck.
There is no bridge, a boat we lack,
Carry us over on your white back."

"That's the end of my tale --look there goes a mouse!
If you catch it in your lap it will make a nice fur cap."

Duntze's surrealistic illustrations provide a dramatic and interesting interpretation of the tale. In the first scene when the starving woodcutter and his horrible wife try to decide what to do, the woman's head covering is bread and she is forcing her husband to look at four miniature caskets. The father's cap is sprouting twigs or trees and he cradles his tiny children surrounded by ferocious forest animals. His actual children look on in dismay. The children are led into a forest featuring what looks like large slices of bread. When the kids return home, the father's hat is growing flowers.

Hansel and Gretel, with golden shocks of hair like dandelions, are first shown innocently playing a hand clapping game. The crotchety witch is dressed like an old peasant woman with too much rouge and sparse and stubby teeth. She looms over a crying Gretel disconcertingly. Her oven has devilish features, and Gretel shuts her into its open maw.

Thing 21: Free -for -all

Two apps that I find useful in my day to day life are Pill Monitor and Meditation Timer. These are admittedly not thrilling, but they are very helpful.

Pill Monitor Free Medication Reminder from Maxwell Software lets you enter the meds that you are taking and allows you to set reminder alarms. So, when it's time to take my pills, little birds begin to sing. It will also keep a history of  up to fifty entries for you.

 

Meditation Timer Free from Maxwell Software simply allows you to set a gentle timer for your meditation sessions. You can enter your preparation time, start chime, interval chime and an end alert. For these, you can hear either a bell, a singing bowl or Tingshas. They also show various soothing images on your phone, but since I close my eyes during meditation, it's pearls before swine. :)



Hansel and Gretel by Tony Ross

In French, but with the same cover art

Hansel and Gretel by Tony Ross, 1989.

Variations:

Does not mention God

 Stepmother stays at home while the father does the dirty work of leading the children into the forest

Devious owl takes the children to the witch's house

House is "... built of cake, with an icing roof, and a garden fence of gingerbread men."

Witch is preceded by her nose, which pops out through the letter box: "It was not a nice nose, and it was green."

Kids have a hint that something wrong when they find tadpoles in their jelly at tea.

Hansel is put into the cellar, not a cage

After Gretel pushes the witch into the oven, the house collapses

Children ride a swan across the water to get home, but it asks for all the treasure that Hansel has in his pockets in payment

Stepmother vanishes in a great ball of fire and the smell of burnt cake

Gretel saved a pearl under her cap

Verse: none

Tony Ross personalizes the tale with a funny tone and the added details mentioned above. His stepmother is a horrible person, snarling at her husband to dump the children in the forest and referring to them as "two extra, useless, snivelling mouths to feed" and then calling "Goodbye, darlings" as they are led away. In response, the woodsman creeps around sadly and allows himself to be bullied.

Much of the book's humor come from Ross' art. When Hansel and Gretel return home the first time, their cat waves the British flag at them, while a mouse prepares to bop the cat on the foot with a hammer, as the cat is standing on the mouse's tail. At the witch's table, she serves Gretel a beverage in a frowny face mug. And as the oven overheats, well dressed mice vacate the gingerbread house carrying tiny luggage.

The story is full of animal friends and foes: the cat and mouse at home, a bat, rabbit, fox and others in the forest, cats, a frog, a snail and a fork-toting rat in a witch hat in the gingerbread kitchen, and the jewel-decked swan who gets the children back to their father.

Ross' adults look pretty grotesque anyway, but the witch has the added bonuses of green warty skin, scraggly teeth, Pippi Longstocking style stick out braids and an impossible half moon face.

This would be a keeper for me if I ran across a copy!

Thing 20: Games

Frogger Free:

"You know you remember Frogger. Okay, maybe you’re too young (or too old?) to remember Frogger, but it’s a very fun game where you have to help the frog cross the street so he doesn’t get killed by a car. This was a very popular arcade game years ago and now you can play it on your mobile device."

I am the right age to remember this game. Then: It had a catchy theme song (which I didn't hear this time around) and I liked it because it was about a frog rather than invaders from space. Also, I was terrible at it. Now: I appear to be somewhat better, probably because I can use my finger to move the frog rather than a button or joystick. I played this in the classic and current view, but the app kept crashing.

Bubble Mania:

"If you think Candy Crush is addictive, try Bubble Mania. The baby kittens have been stolen and you need to get them back by matching bubbles. Match bubbles of the same color to drop them and get to the kittens. There are over 150 levels and they become more difficult with a variety of different types of bubbles the higher you get."

You had me at "kittens." Okay, they are some creepy looking cats, but if you just forget what they're supposed to be and accept them as kinda cute cartoon animals, all will be well. I played up to level 7. This is a maybe.

 

Word Collapse:

"Each puzzle in WordCollapse contains a number of words on a theme, such as fruits, sports or animals. All letters are mixed and you find a word and swipe it. The tiles disappear and the remaining tiles collapse into new words. The tricky bit is to remove the words in the correct order so you clear the board and complete the level. 70 levels, more via in-app purchase. Languages: English, Español, Italiano, Português, Français, Deutsch, Nederlands, Svenska, Norsk, Dansk, Suomi."

This was okay. Unlike other games I can play on autopilot, I did have to think a bit to do this. I played "20 Proverbs" and some of "Song Quotes, Free." I don't like how after every level a "Earn 15 free hints" type ad comes up. The game was fine, but not particularly addicting/intriguing.

I already have some games that I regularly play. These are:

Kitty Solitaire & Sweeper:

I only ever play the solitaire game. I have to say, that on a little iPhone it can be hard on the eyes. Also, you don't have to play it very many times before you realize that the aces and low suit cards will always be in one of the seven piles and never in the cards that you shuffle through.

That's okay, though, because the special feature of this game is that you get to collect cats. In between hands, cats walk into your room and you try to befriend them with toys, treats, etc. When you tame them, you get to "collect" them. This is stupid but fun for me.

This game provides me with a whole new, mess free way to be a crazy cat lady!

 

 

I also play Castle Solitaire and Jelly Splash and have recently started Candy Crush and Farm Heroes.

Thing 19: Hobbies

MyGarden:

"For those with a green thumb or interest in discovering who online might have gardening advice, try MyGarden. This web service and companion mobile apps categorizes itself as the Facebook of gardening. Share what is in your garden, ask for help identifying plants you would like to add (or eliminate), and get useful information for your growing zone."


This seems like a good idea, but time will tell. Aside from my log in, this is what the app looks like once you get it downloaded. After I signed in, I first went to "Plant overview" and began to add the flowers in my gardens. I figured the easiest way to start was to go to "all plants" and add from the existing list.

 

If you are interested, here are the 22 plants that I added:

 

1. Balloon Flower 'Sentimental Blue'
2. Baptisia australis
3. Bee Balm
4. Campunula 'Clips Blue'
5. Cat-mint
6. Columbine
7. Evening primrose
8. Fern
9. Flowering Crabapple
10. Garden Lady's-mantle
11. Hardy Geranium, Cranesbill
12. Lily-of-the-valley
13. Love-in-a-mist
14. Morning Glory 'Heavenly Blue'
15. Oriental Poppy
16. Paeonia lactiflora 'Sarah Bernhardt'
17. Pink
18. Scilla Siberica
19. Shasta Daisy
20. Snapdragon
21. Sweet alyssum
22. Sweet Violet

This is how this displays:

 

This is not all of the plants in my garden, assuming that they all come up/plant well, but I don't see a way to add plants that aren't yet in their list.

That leads to the problem that I did have with this app. It is not especially self explanatory. When I set up my account, I could see from looking at other gardener's profiles that there must be a way to add your photo and biographical information, but I never found it. Instead, I cheated and went to the website and added my info from there. I also noticed that you can add tags about your garden, which again I had to do from the website.

Here's my profile:

 

So, I'm happy to have learned of the existence of www.mygarden.org, but when I use it, I'll do it from the website and not the app, because I want access to all of the features. It does seem to be a unique social network for gardeners though, at least in app form. I've never found another one like it.

Note for gardeners: I think that MyGarden could be improved if users were asked to put more information about their gardens in their profile. Currently it asks for city, country and size of garden. When I was trying to find like-minded gardeners, I was looking for state, zone or region of the country (I know it's an international site, but it would be helpful for U.S. users), and garden conditions, like primarily shade or sun, etc. It just seems practical.

Thing 18: Education

Project Noah:

"Project Noah is an award-winning mobile application that helps nature lovers discover local wildlife and aspiring citizen scientists contribute to current research projects. Noah stands for networked organisms and habitats. Think of Project Noah as a tool people can use to document and learn about their natural surroundings and as a technology platform research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere."


This app looks like fun, and as it happens today my coworker Carol and I saw some red and black birds that we found out are Scarlet Tanagers. I google searched "red bird with black wings" and from there found info at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds.

So, with Project Noah, I was able to record what I saw under "My Spottings." Kind of. Here are some things that I found out while trying to do so. 1).You must have a photo of the wildlife you have seen, or the information that you enter will not save. 2). It must be your own photograph or it will be deleted. I didn't take a picture of the birds that I saw, so I tried entering the photo from the All About Birds site above. I wondered why it didn't site my source, and when I looked again about ten minutes later, the photo had already been deleted and a message about FAQs had been left. The brief bird information that I recorded is still there, but it says that I added it 19 hours ago, which is incorrect.

You can also join groups with missions of spotting particular types of nature. I joined Minnesota Wildlife (Plants) and Minnesota Wildlife (Animals). I also earned the Tadpole patch for entering my first sighting.

3D Brain:

"Use your touch screen to rotate and zoom around 29 interactive structures. Discover how each brain region functions, what happens when it is injured, and how it is involved in mental illness. Each detailed structure comes with information on functions, disorders, brain damage, case studies, and links to modern research."

I used this one to take a brief tour of the brain. Specifically, I was interested in what part of the brain is responsible for anxiety and depression. Apparently, the culprit is the Amygdala. Little jerk.

There are many interesting educational apps listed, so I will probably be doing a part 2 in the future, but for now I can't wait to move on to Thing 19: Hobbies!