Jane Yolen has written the novel Mapping the Bones about Jewish children surviving the terrors of occupied Poland and a concentration camp and she uses the structural framework of the fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel.” In both stories, the children are separated from their parents, wander lost in a forest, and suffer acute starvation and deprivation until they win free through their own determination and love.

Yolen tells the story in alternating chapters. One chapter is third person limited narration from the point of view of Chaim, the modern-day Hansel. The next chapter is first-person narration from Gretel told long after the events Chaim narrates. But Yolen is careful to in the Gretel narration to hold back whether Chaim survives their stay in the concentration camp.

The climatic scene is rather horrifying and bloody. I think I will just reference Josef Mengele and leave it there.

I read the book over about 4 days. The pace of my reading was motivated by my quest to identify the parallels between the story of Chaim and Gittel, twins born to Jewish parents with the story of Hansel and Gretel. Yolen’s novel does not unreflectively follow the Grimm fairy tale and she adds enough contrasting detail to keep the reader intrigued.