Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887764975 ISBN 13: 9780887764974

Publisher: Tundra Books, 2000

Synopsis

Gerda and Kay are the best of friends. They live across an alley from each other and happily chat, play, and tend their lovely rose garden. The children are happy until tragedy strikes Kay. His eye and heart are pierced with fragments of a mirror, and the loving boy Gerda knew vanishes. The Snow Queen has put him under her spell and taken him to her palace of snow and ice. It is up to Gerda to find him and bring him home to the love that awaits him.

In this timeless storybook, Ken Setterington has captured the haunting beauty of the classic tale of love’s ability to conquer the coldest, most damaged heart. The book is illustrated with the delicate traditional cut paper art of scherenschnitt, which Hans Christian Andersen himself practiced.

About this title

About the Author:

Storyteller and librarian Ken Setterington was born in Toronto. He worked with CUSO in Nigeria for two years and now is the Children and Youth Advocate for Toronto Library Services. He was honored by the Association of Canadian Publishers as the Outstanding Public Librarian for the year 2000. The Snow Queen is his first book.

Nelly and Ernst Hofer learned the folk art of scherenschnitt in their native Switzerland. They live on a dairy farm in Perth County, Ontario with their two children. Their first book was Silent Night: The Song from Heaven by Linda Granfield.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

WHICH HAS TO DO WITH A MIRROR AND ITS FRAGMENTS 

Now then! We will begin. When the story is done you shall know a great deal more than you do now. 
He was a terribly bad hobgoblin, a goblin of the very wickedest sort and, in fact, he was the devil himself. One day the devil was in a very good humour because he had just finished a mirror which had this peculiar power: everything good and beautiful that was reflected in it seemed to dwindle to almost nothing at all, while everything that was worthless and ugly became most conspicuous and even uglier than ever. In this mirror the loveliest landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the very best people became hideous, or stood on their heads and had no stomachs. Their faces were distorted beyond any recognition, and if a person had a freckle it was sure to spread until it covered both nose and mouth. 
‘That’s very funny!’ said the devil. If a good, pious thought passed through anyone’s mind, it showed in the mirror as a carnal grin, and the devil laughed aloud at his ingenious invention. 
All those who went to the hobgoblin’s school – for he had a school of his own – told everyone that a miracle had come to pass. Now, they asserted, for the very first time you could see how the world and its people really looked. They scurried about with the mirror until there was not a person alive nor a land on earth that had not been distorted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tundra Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0887764975
• ISBN 13: 9780887764974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Hofer Nelly, Hofer Ernst