Witches, dragons and the Terrible Deev: a choice of this year’s children’s books
Now here’s a combination you never thought you’d see, not least because one of them is dead: Maurice Sendak and Stephen King. But there they are in Hansel and Gretel (Hodder Children’s, £20). Who knew that Sendak had illustrated Grimm, or that Mr Horror wrote fairy tales? It turns out that Sendak created sets for the Humperdinck opera, and King writes to these illustrations, which loom large and dramatic. King says that he has always been attracted both to fairy tales and to Sendak, and that one image especially that spoke to him was the infamous candy house becoming a terrible face. I thought: this is what the house really
