# Hop-o’-My-Thumb _Charles Perrault_ · 16 min read · ages 7-12 In this Talerie retelling of Charles Perrault’s classic, a poor woodcutter’s family abandons its seven sons in the forest during a famine, and the youngest, tiny Hop-o’-My-Thumb, twice saves his brothers by leading them home, first with pebbles and then, when the crumbs he scatters are eaten by birds, by outwitting a child-eating Ogre in whose house they take shelter. After swapping his brothers’ nightcaps for the Ogre’s daughters’ gold crowns to escape the Ogre’s knife in the dark, Hop-o’-My-Thumb steals the Ogre’s magical seven-league boots and uses them to secure his family’s fortune, becoming a trusted royal courier who sets his whole household up in comfort. --- Once upon a time there lived a woodcutter and his wife who had seven sons, and they were desperately poor. The seven boys were a heavy burden, for not one of them was yet old enough to earn his keep. What troubled the parents most was the youngest, a frail, silent little boy people took for slow-witted. He had been so small at birth, no bigger than a thumb, that everyone called him Hop-o’-My-Thumb. He was the one the family blamed for everything, yet he was the cleverest and most watchful of all the brothers, saying little but listening to everything. Then came a terrible year. The famine grew so fierce that the woodcutter and his wife saw no way to keep their children fed. One night, when the boys were asleep and the two of them sat by the fire, the woodcutter said, his voice heavy with grief, “You know we cannot feed our children any longer. I cannot bear to watch them starve in front of me. Tomorrow I mean to lead them into the forest and lose them there. It will be easy enough: while they gather kindling, we need only slip away without being seen.” “Oh,” cried his wife, “how could you lead your own children to be lost?” Her husband reminded her of their poverty again and again, but she could not bring herself to agree. She was poor, but she was still their mother. Yet when she thought of watching them starve before her eyes, she gave in at last, and went to bed weeping. Hop-o’-My-Thumb had heard every word. Catching the sound of grown-up talk from his bed, he had crept down and hidden beneath his father’s stool to listen unseen. He went back to bed but could not sleep, turning over in his mind what he would do. At first light he rose, ran down to a stream, and filled his pockets with small white pebbles before hurrying home, saying nothing of it to his brothers. They set off into a forest so thick that at ten paces one boy could not see another. The woodcutter began to cut wood, and the children to gather brushwood for kindling. Watching them at their work, the father and mother edged slowly away, then slipped off together down a hidden path. When the boys realized they were alone, they burst into tears and cried with all their might. Hop-o’-My-Thumb let them cry, for as they had walked he had quietly dropped his white pebbles along the path, and he knew exactly how to find the way home. “Don’t be afraid, brothers,” he told them. “Father and Mother have left us here, but I can lead you home. Just follow me.” They followed him back along the very path they had come by, all the way to their own door, though at first they were too frightened to go in, and stood pressed against it, listening to their parents inside. At that very moment, the village lord had finally sent the woodcutter money long owed him, money they had given up hoping for. It saved them, for they had truly been starving. The woodcutter sent his wife out for meat, and since it had been so long since she had eaten well, she bought three times more than two people needed. When they had eaten their fill, the woodcutter’s wife said, “Oh, where are our poor children now! They would have feasted well on what’s left here. But it was you, husband, who wanted to lose them, and I said all along we would live to regret it. What are they doing in that forest tonight? Heaven help them, the wolves may already have eaten them!” Her husband lost patience at last, for she said twenty times over that they would regret it, and that she had told him so. He threatened to beat her if she did not hold her tongue. It was not that he felt any less grief than she did, only that her words wore on him, in the way of men who love to hear a wife speak sense but cannot bear to be reminded of it. Still weeping, she cried once more, louder than before, “Oh, where are my children, my poor children now!” This time the boys, waiting outside the door, heard her and called out together, “Here we are! Here we are!” She flung the door open and pulled them into her arms. “How glad I am to see you again! You must be worn out and starving.” They sat down at the table and ate with such hunger that it warmed their parents’ hearts, while the boys, all talking at once, told of the fright they’d had in the forest. The joy lasted exactly as long as the money did. Once it was spent, their old grief returned, and they resolved to lose the children again, and this time to lead them much farther into the forest, so the plan could not fail. They could not speak of it quietly enough to escape Hop-o’-My-Thumb’s ears, and he meant to save his brothers as before. But though he rose early to gather more pebbles, he found the door locked fast, and could not get out. He did not know what to do until his mother handed each boy a piece of bread for breakfast; then it came to him that he could drop crumbs along the road instead. He tucked the bread into his pocket. Their parents led them into the darkest, thickest part of the forest, and the moment the boys were busy at their work, slipped away down a hidden side path. Hop-o’-My-Thumb was not troubled at first, certain he could find the way home by the crumbs he had scattered, but he was dismayed to find not a single one left. The birds had eaten them all. Now the boys were truly lost, for the farther they walked, the deeper into the forest they wandered. Night fell, and a wind rose that filled them with terror. On every side they seemed to hear wolves howling, coming to devour them, and they barely dared speak or turn their heads. Then rain began to fall, soaking them to the bone; they slipped with every step and fell in the mud, rising each time filthy and not knowing where to put their hands. Hop-o’-My-Thumb climbed to the top of a tree to see if he could spot anything. Turning his head every way, he made out a faint light, like a candle, far off beyond the forest. He climbed down, and once his feet touched the ground he could see it no longer, which dismayed him. But after walking on a while with his brothers toward where he had seen it, he caught sight of it again as they came out from among the trees. They reached the house where the light burned, though not without many frights, for every time they dipped into a hollow they lost sight of it. They knocked at the door, and a woman came to open it and asked what they wanted. Hop-o’-My-Thumb told her they were poor children lost in the forest, begging a night’s shelter out of kindness. Seeing how sweet-faced they all were, the woman began to weep. “Oh, my poor children, where have you come to?” she said. “Do you know this is the house of an Ogre who eats little children?” “Oh, madam,” Hop-o’-My-Thumb answered, trembling as hard as his brothers, “what else can we do? The wolves of the forest are sure to eat us tonight if you will not take us in, and if that is our choice, we would rather it were your husband who ate us. Perhaps he will take pity on us, if you would only ask him to.” The Ogre’s wife believed she could hide them from her husband until morning, and so she let them in and led them to warm themselves by a good fire, where a whole sheep turned on a spit for the Ogre’s supper. Just as they were warming up, they heard heavy blows on the door: the Ogre was home. His wife hurried the boys under the bed and went to open it. The Ogre asked at once whether supper was ready, then sat down to eat. The mutton was still bloody, but that pleased him more. He sniffed at the air, saying he could smell fresh meat. “It must be the calf I just dressed that you’re smelling,” his wife told him. “I tell you again, I smell fresh meat,” the Ogre said, eyeing her sideways, “and there is something here I don’t understand.” With that he rose and went straight to the bed. “So this is how you’d trick me, wretched woman!” he said. “I don’t know what stops me from eating you too. Lucky for you that you’re an old fool. Here’s game that comes just in time, for I have three Ogre friends coming to visit any day now.” He pulled the boys out from under the bed one by one. The poor children fell to their knees, begging for mercy, but they had fallen into the hands of the cruelest of all ogres, who was already devouring them with his eyes. He fetched a great knife and, coming toward the trembling children, sharpened it on a whetstone he held in his other hand. He had already seized one boy when his wife said, “What do you want to do at this hour? Won’t tomorrow do just as well?” “Hold your tongue,” the Ogre answered. “They’ll be all the more tender for it.” “But you still have so much meat here,” his wife pressed. “There’s a calf, two sheep, and half a pig!” “You’re right,” said the Ogre. “Give them a good supper so they don’t lose any weight, and put them to bed.” The good woman was overjoyed, and brought the boys a fine supper, though fear had taken away their appetite. As for the Ogre, he went back to his drinking, delighted to have such a feast ready for his friends, and drank a good deal more than usual, which sent him off to bed early. Now the Ogre had seven daughters, still only children. Their complexions were lovely, from eating fresh meat like their father, but their eyes were small and round, their noses hooked, their mouths wide with long, sharp teeth. They were not yet truly wicked, though they already bit small children to suck their blood. They had been put to bed early, all seven together in one great bed, each wearing a little gold crown. In the same room stood another bed just as large, and it was there the Ogre’s wife laid the seven boys to sleep, before going off to her own bed. Hop-o’-My-Thumb had noticed the gold crowns on the daughters’ heads, and he feared the Ogre might regret not killing the boys that very evening. So in the middle of the night he rose and quietly swapped his brothers’ nightcaps for the girls’ gold crowns, setting the crowns on his brothers’ heads and his own, so the Ogre would mistake the girls for the boys, and the boys for his own daughters. It worked exactly as he had hoped: waking near midnight, the Ogre regretted putting off until morning what he might have done that same night. He sprang out of bed, seized his great knife, and said, “Let’s go see how our young rascals are doing. No sense doing this twice.” He felt his way to his daughters’ room and reached the bed where the boys lay sleeping, all but Hop-o’-My-Thumb, who felt the Ogre’s hand pass over his head and was very afraid. Feeling the gold crowns, the Ogre said, “I very nearly made a fine mess of things. I must have drunk too much last night.” He went next to his daughters’ bed, and feeling the boys’ nightcaps there, said, “Ah, here are our young rascals. Let’s get to work.” Without a moment’s hesitation, mistaking his own seven daughters for the boys in the dark, he killed them then and there. Well pleased with his night’s work, he went back to his own bed. The moment Hop-o’-My-Thumb heard the Ogre snoring, he woke his brothers and told them to dress quickly and follow him. They crept down into the garden, climbed over the wall, and ran nearly the whole night through, trembling, not knowing where they were going. When the Ogre woke, he told his wife, “Go on up and get those young rascals from last night dressed.” Astonished at her husband’s sudden kindness and never guessing what he had truly meant, the Ogress went upstairs, and there she found her seven daughters. She fainted at once, as almost any woman would at such a sight. Fearing she was taking too long, the Ogre went up to help, and was every bit as horrified as she was. “What have I done?” he cried. “They’ll pay for this, the wretches, and at once!” He threw a jug of water in his wife’s face to wake her. “Quick, give me my seven-league boots,” he said, “so I can go after them.” He strode off across the country and at last came upon the very road the boys were walking, now barely a hundred paces from their father’s house. They saw him crossing mountains and rivers as easily as stepping over a brook. Hop-o’-My-Thumb spotted a hollow rock nearby, hid his six brothers inside it, and squeezed in himself to keep watch. Worn out from his long, useless chase, for the seven-league boots tire a man greatly, the Ogre sat down to rest on the very rock where the boys were hiding. Exhausted, he soon fell asleep, and began to snore so terribly that the poor children were nearly as frightened as when he had stood over them with his knife. Hop-o’-My-Thumb, less afraid than the rest, told his brothers to run home while the Ogre slept soundly, and not to worry about him. They took his advice and hurried home. Hop-o’-My-Thumb crept up to the sleeping Ogre and gently drew off his boots. They were enormous, but being enchanted, the boots could grow smaller or larger to fit whoever wore them, so they fit his feet and legs as neatly as if they had been made for him. He walked straight to the Ogre’s house, where he found the Ogre’s wife weeping over her murdered daughters. “Your husband,” Hop-o’-My-Thumb told her, “is in terrible danger. A band of robbers has seized him and sworn to kill him unless he hands over all his gold and silver. He caught sight of me as they held a dagger to his throat, and begged me to warn you and to bring back everything of value he owns, or they will kill him without mercy. He wanted me to take his seven-league boots so I could hurry, and so you would know I’m telling the truth.” Terrified, the good woman gave him everything she had, for whatever else he was, the Ogre had always been a good husband to her. Loaded down with the whole of the Ogre’s fortune, Hop-o’-My-Thumb made his way home, where he was welcomed with great joy. Some tell it differently: that Hop-o’-My-Thumb never took the Ogre’s treasure, only the boots, and used them only to guide lost children home. In that telling, he went straight to the royal court, anxious for news of a distant battle, and offered the king word of the army before day’s end. The king promised him a fine sum if he managed it. Hop-o’-My-Thumb brought back word that very evening, and once his speed had made him known, the king paid him well to carry his orders to the army ever after. In time he saved up a good fortune and returned to his father’s house, where no one could have imagined the joy of seeing him again. He set his whole family up in comfort and bought newly created positions for his father and each of his brothers, providing for them all while serving his king faithfully besides. --- - Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/hop-o-my-thumb - Source: Le Petit Poucet (Charles Perrault, 1697 ; éd. 1902 des Contes de Perrault) (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Contes_de_Perrault_(éd._1902)/Le_Petit_Poucet) - Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Le Petit Poucet (Charles Perrault, 1697 ; éd. 1902 des Contes de Perrault) — original: author died 1703 (+70 passed) - License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)