The Snow Princess - Hardcover

Sanderson, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316779822 ISBN 13: 9780316779821

Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers, 2004

Synopsis

Aware of the warning by her parents, Father Frost and Mother Spring, the Snow Princess sets off to see the world without any intention of every falling in love, but after meeting a kind and handsome shepherd, the princess's frigid heart yields to the excitement of her first love.

About this title

About the Author

Ruth Sanderson is a gifted author and illustrator who has received numerous honors for such books as Cinderella, The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring, The Crystal Mountain, Tapestries, Rose Red and Snow White, Papa Gatto, The Nativity, The Enchanted Wood, and The Twelve Dancing Princesses. She lives with her family in Ware, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Grade 2-4–Inspired by the Russian ballet The Snow Maiden, Sanderson has written a fictional tale of the daughter of Father Frost and Mother Spring. Unmindful of her parents' warnings that she will become mortal if she loves a human, the Snow Princess goes off to learn the ways of people. When she falls in love with a young man and saves him from dying in a snowstorm that she has created, she willingly trades her immortality for love. Despite some dramatic fairy-tale elements, the story is not compelling. Also, there is some unevenness in the double-page oil paintings set in a wooded countryside in winter. Some feature small, sketchy illustrations of people in peasant costume, while a few show the Snow Princess and her young man in larger, realistic portraits that are obviously painted from models. This is not one of Sanderson's best efforts.–Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
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Sanderson's version of a Russian folktale is based on the Tchaikovsky opera-ballet The Snow Princess, which recasts the traditional story as a romance in which the daughter of Father Frost enters the human world and finds her icy heart warmed, to her parents' dismay, by a handsome youth. Sanderson's resplendent oils have a suitably chilly polish, and children will be transfixed by the characters' elaborate Byzantine costumes. Sanderson stays true to her source in every detail but one: in the opera the girl is as doomed as her folktale counterpart, but Sanderson allows her to forgo her immortality to stay with the man she loves. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316779822
• ISBN 13: 9780316779821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32