“The Child in Hunger is a questioning of the Rapunzel fairy tale and the role of The Witch in the story. Rapunzel is also a story of complex love and jealousy, with the witch as an overprotective guardian trying to shield Rapunzel from a mother’s selfish greed and a father’s inability to protect his child. At the end of the book, unable to admit to the violence of her actions, the witch reminds Rapunzel that she always loved her.

The Child in Hunger is about distorted parental care and how it can lead a child to make precarious choices in adulthood. I want to question who the villain really is in the fairy tales we’re told. In examining these dynamics, I want the book to highlight the lingering impact of actions as well as of stories and myths on the choices we make.

I am drawn to the uncomfortable contrast between childlike illustrations and fairy-tale brutality. Through the clash between illustration and text, I want to show the cruelty at the heart of European fairy tales, stories we pass down from generation to generation as if they were a cultural imperative, integral to who we are. What would our imaginations look like, what would the world look like, if we moved away from these stories of malice and greed?”

Text reads: “If I tell you who you are, will you forgive me? I saw you crying into each other’s eyes, piecing together a past out of your name and rumours. This is the truth. You were born out of thirst and softening. You knew no mother, that woman spying over garden walls. I want this, I want that, I want more. Then I came along. I meant to love you. A plan that didn’t work. I drifted further, kept you closer. All you knew was me and dreams of lighthouses at the edge of a sea. All you knew was song. Your voice calling him to you. Not the plan, but it worked. I’ll take you away from here. I’ll do this. I’ll do He’s as light as flight, not like you, clawing upwards to de-hide me. I will steal your hair to become you. I can tell from the blood on your sheets. I will pierce his eyes like hearts. We are the consequence of craving, greed, hunger, and the voraciousness for life. I raised you in that tower. You grew a ladder, and up I climbed, your hair the sun, your voice the sky. Remember, you were always the angel of my life.”