HANSEL AND GRETEL

Where Scribner's translation departs from tradition it is only to strike a false note: The witch has a ""fantastic sense of smell"" and ""it was really gruesome"" when Gretel pushed her into the oven. And though Adrienne Adams' tissuey day and night forest scenes make lovely pictures, her stereotypically stooped, beaky, white-faced witch is completely devoid of any emanations of evil or anything else, and her tiny, blond, sentimentalized children are merely pathetic. It's all too pretty--though as no other picture book version has faced up to the story's darkness, you will probably want to add this to your collection of the nearer misses.