Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales: A Selection

by Hans Christian Andersen and ( DAN MAI ) AN TU SHENG ( Andersen.H.C. ) . ( YING ) JIN SI LAN ( Kingsland.L.W. ) YI

Book Overview

Twenty-four tales with reproductions of the original illustrations by Vilhelm Pedersen and Lorenz Frolich.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192835076
• ISBN13: 9780192835079
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.5" x 4.9"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Fairy Tales for All Ages

This is an extremely readable selection of 26, out of about 156, of Hans Andersen tales. As the brief but very fine and helpful introduction by Naomi Lewis points out, these tales are perhaps more for adults than children, as Andersen himself wanted them to be. Most of them have a darker side. I also believe that the eminent literary critic, Harold Bloom, includes Andersen in his select list of short story writers qualified to be part of the Western canon. I did prefer some of the collection's early and middle tales, such as "Little Claus and Big Claus," "The Travelling-Companion," and "The Little Mermaid" to a handful of the later ones like "She was Good for Nothing," or "The Family and the Gardener." It seems that Andersen's true imaginary gifts shine best where his writing is least in step with the real world.

12 short stories

The very short 1981 edition currently before me features black and white illustrations by Philip Gough, and was translated by Naomi Lewis.There's been a trend lately for fantasy authors to take traditional fairy tales and retell them, either as novels (as in Mercedes Lackey's case, or Peggy Kerr's _The Wild Swans_) or short stories (Tanith Lee did this even before Terri Windling came along). Hans Christian Andersen's little gems *aren't* traditional folk tales - he did the work - but quite often serve to fuel such fires anyway.The translator, Naomi Lewis, has included a brief introduction discussing Andersen's life and career, and a few pages of notes at the end of the book discussing the original publication and origins of each story herein."The Princess and the Pea", "Thumbelina", "The Emperor's New Clothes""The Little Mermaid" - If you're only familiar with the Disney version, I warn you that they discarded much of what makes this story truly great. When evaluating a translation of this story, a quick test is to check the last scene between the mermaid and her prince to see how well the translator captures the actions and feelings of the characters.The youngest of the seven mer-princesses has always been more fascinated by her grandmother's tales of the world above than any of her sisters, but she has the longest to wait for her first trip to the surface on her fifteenth birthday. Since mer-folk turn into seafoam at the end of their 300 years of life and have no immortal souls, she is especially curious about her grandmother's tales of how humans, when they die, can rise into a higher world just as the merfolk rise to the ocean surface, but one the merfolk can never reach, save through a human's love. (Oscar Wilde once turned this upside-down in "The Fisherman and the Soul", a very good story in which a fisherman fell in love with a mermaid and magically cut himself free of his soul to join her in the sea.)As each of the sisters in turn makes her first journey, we see the world through their eyes, and since each has a different temperament and their birthdays fall at different times of the year, each sees and seeks out different sights. But when the youngest princess' turn finally comes (her name is never given), she has experiences that even the 3rd sister (the most adventurous of the lot) never had: a prince's birthday celebration at sea is struck by a great storm, foundering his ship before her eyes."The Steadfast Tin Soldier" - A toy story."The Nightingale" - Try Lackey's _The Eagle and the Nightingales_."The Ugly Duckling""The Snow Queen" - Check out Joan D. Vinge's novel of the same name."The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" - They're porcelain figures who have fallen in love, but when her grandfather arranges a marriage for her with a mahogany carving instead, they decide to run away together."The Happy Family" - One of Andersen's lesser-known stories, of a little family of snails who know that they're the most important people in the