Lysistrata's Daughter

Rapunzel , Retold by Barbara Rogasky, Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” It’s such a familiar sentence, but how does Rapunzel get up in that tower, letting people climb up to her using her hair as a ladder but never able to come down herself? The story begins with a poor yet loving couple who have no children. Finally, after years of waiting and hoping, the wife conceives. But all is not well. The wife looks out her window everyday into the garden of Mother Gothel, a witch. She sees rampion growing there and has such an enormous desire for the herb that she stops eating and grows weak and sick. Her husband, desperate to save the health of his wife and unborn child, sneaks into the witch’s garden at night and steals an armload of rampion. His wife makes a gigantic salad with it and eats it hungrily. Almost as soon as the last bite of salad is gone, she longs for more rampion. She keeps staring into the garden and stops eating again. So the hus...