I listened to the audio book of this. I enjoyed it. It was interesting hearing the differences between the original fairy tales and what we have all grown up knowing. They are pretty twisted and depressing compared to the upbeat lighthearted ones that we know today. ( )

I love the sadness in Andersen's tales and particularly liked 'The Shadow', 'The Story of A Mother' (Ruth Lingford made a beautifully animated 1997 short film of it called 'Death and the Mother' which I highly recommend), 'The Fir Tree', and 'The Wood Nymph'.

This is a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy/folk tales for children, which includes some of his best-known stories, like 'The Little Mermaid', 'The Princess on the Pea', 'The Little Match Girl' and 'The Snow Queen', as well as a number of tales that were unknown to me. Though I still love reading fairy tales even as an adult, especially those of a darker hue, I did not enjoy the stories as much as I had expected. It may well be that these are simply too Victorian in character for me, with an admonishing finger raised for children to be obedient and well behaved, and for adults to be God-fearing. A DNF from me. ( )

We have been reading this book at bedtime for a long, long time. I know, I should have looked at the book and realized how long it was, but with the lushly illustrated cover, I was really, really expecting more illustrations. Of which there were almost none, and certainly not like the cover.

Before I get carried away, I do want to say that I found this collection of tales to be magical and surprising. I guess I was often distracting by evaluating whether or not I thought the stories were too "old" for Jefferson. I shouldn't have worried. He said he really liked the book, and after we finished reading it, he took it upstairs to read in bed and within a few days said he'd reread most of it. (He skipped some of the stories.) Of course, his favorite stories tended to be the most blood-thirsty ones.

I had never read the "real" Little Mermaid before. It's interesting to me how much darkness is in these tales. Not just "the girl dies," which was all I'd been told about how the original varied from the Disney version, but through all the stories. That there is darkness, and we probably won't get what we most want in life, but still we should be honest and humble, and strive for justice and beauty.

If Jefferson absorbed even a little of that message, I should be pretty happy. ( )

Andersen is a mixed bag for me. First, this is a beautiful collection, with wonderful woodcut illustrations by Andersen himself, and nicely translated. It contains his most famous stories, including one of my all-time favorites, "The Nightingale," as well as such tried-and-true chestnuts as "The Ugly Duckling," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Princess on the Pea" and the incomparable "Snow Queen" (what a strange and bewitching story that is). The less well-known stories are even better; I have to heartily recommend "Little Claus and Big Claus" and "The Traveling Companion." But Andersen is pretty hard on his characters, particularly his girls, and stories like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Red Shoes" are very disturbing to me now. Many of these stories have a strong religious bent to them often involving subjecting oneself to God's will that made me uncomfortable, so that when reading these stories aloud to my son, I often found myself censoring what I was reading. I couldn't even finish "The Little Match Girl," a story that is appropriate for no one. Altogether, I prefer the straightforward bloodthirstiness of Grimm, but as I say, there are many gems in here so long as you are choosy. ( )