Rapunzel and the Evil Witch

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.

Written by Jonathan Pageau. Illustrated by Heather Pollington.

The tale

About the tale

Jonathan Pageau tells the story the old way, keeping the shape it had before the Brothers Grimm wrote it down. Children will read it as the story of a girl in a tower. Older readers will see a story about love that tries to keep someone too safe, and about a prince who has to lose his sight before he can find his way back.

Heather Pollington designed and illustrated the book. She has worked on major fantasy and fairy tale film franchises, and she knows how to hide meaning in small, beautiful details.

Rapunzel and the Evil Witch is the third of eight books in Tales for Once & Ever. The tales are meant to be read together. Watch for the Hermit, who tells the Prince a story about Jack.

Illustration from Rapunzel and the Evil Witch

With a beautiful and surprising mix of image and word, Pageau and Pollington have reclaimed the brilliance of a myth beyond irony. The seeming simplicity is haunted by the pregnancy of deep meaning, over and against our all too familiar narrative cynicism. The interweaving is patterned and rich, at once complex and simple, a supersaturated icon of reclamation that plays with familiarity married with surprise.

Kale ZeldenTeacher & Percipient of the Underneath

Through a perfect marriage of word and image, Jonathan Pageau and Heather Pollington offer a story of almost unbearable beauty, a tale of renewal about the masculine and feminine virtues we must recover if we would, once again, reintegrate heaven and earth and make ourselves a home.

Annie CrawfordThe Society for Women of Letters