The Snow Queen (Works in Translation)

Gerda, the courageous young heroine, risks everything to save Kay, the boy she loves, from the clutches of the Snow Queen. Reissue.

Grade 2-6-A beautifully illustrated translation of Andersen's well-known tale about the power of innocence and love triumphing over evil. The varying moods of Barrett's watercolor-and-pencil scenes perfectly complement the curious story. Softly glowing paintings of the two fair-skinned, sweet-faced children contrast with the stark, dramatic coldness of the Snow Queen's realm and the fantastic, almost eerie atmosphere of the robber band's forest hideout. The story's religious overtones are subtly echoed in the pictures: a cross formed by the topmost branches of an evergreen in Gerda's path; the cloud of angels surrounding the girl; her handful of white lillies at the end. Charming illustrative touches amidst double spreads of two-columned text highlight moments in the story. Both pages of text and full-page pictures are bordered by a fine black line, and the number of each chapter is decorated with a small vignette corresponding to that section of the tale. Surpassing all available translations and adaptations in its pictorial evocation of the story's essence, this version is sure to become the one of choice in most collections.
Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lewis's commanding translation of this Andersen classic rings with nobility even as it maintains a colloquial jauntiness. The famously gripping narrative, of tender-hearted Gerda's epic quest to rescue her friend Kay from the frozen realm of the Snow Queen, is respectfully and insightfully introduced by Lewis. She points out, for example, that, of all of Andersen's major tales, The Snow Queen is "the most free from ill fortune, sorrow, unkind chance" and that its protagonists "make their own luck, good or bad, as they go"; and that it is the "only great classic fairy tale in which every positive character is a girl or woman . . . while the victim to be rescued is a boy." Barrett (see review of Beware Beware , above) contributes gentle watercolor and pencil illustrations, evoking an ageless fairy-tale realm while a frisson of danger lingers beneath her flower-filled images. Pictures of icy wastes--a flurry of blue, white and violet--are especially striking. Inset illustrations and incidental art as well as full- and double-page pictures are interspersed throughout the very substantial text in an agreeable book design that accommodates the youngest members of the target audience. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4-6, younger and older for reading aloud. First published 150 years ago, Andersen's long fairy tale is a story for our time, and Lewis' translation captures both the mystery and the immediacy of the telling. Kay is kidnapped and held in thrall by the Snow Queen in her palace, where "the walls were of driven snow, and the doors and windows of cutting wind." His loving friend Gerda undergoes all kinds of trials on a perilous journey to save him. Gerda's love gives her courage and determination, and when she finally gets to the land of monstrous snow and Northern Lights, her warm tears melt the ice in Kay's heart and wash the glass splinter from his eye, so that he can recognize her and be free. There's unusual complexity in this story in which even the flowers are self-centered characters and the images are both magical and ordinary: the Snow Queen promises Kay "the whole world and a new pair of skates." Barrett's dreamy watercolor-and-pencil illustrations are gentle for the most part, capturing the turn of the seasons. The pictures become truly scary in the scene in which dreams rush past on the stairs and in the sepia-toned views of the robbers' hideout. As Lewis points out in her introduction, this is a quest story in which all the main characters are women and the victim to be rescued is a boy. Hazel Rochman