The Tinder Box

A retelling of Andersen's classic tale of a brave soldier who finds love and fortune in a magic tinderbox

Purists will be horrified. This is not just a retelling , but a complete re-imagining of the tale. Moser keeps the structure: a war-weary soldier acquires a tinderbox, ventures into a glittering underworld, and braves three huge dogs. The box' magic gives him access to wealth and to love: for the latter he nearly hangs, but the tinderbox saves him and all ends happily. Everything but the action, however, is Moser's: time, place, characters, idiom. The hero is an ex-Confederate. Instead of a witch, the old curmudgeon who sends him after the box is an east Tennessee mountain man. The dialect is Appalachian country; the heroine is the green-eyed daughter of an absentee politician and his domineering wife (removed by the dogs so the young couple can triumph). Moser's superb watercolors are chiefly portraits of the principals: the old codger; the country girl; the open-faced hero, Yoder Ott--and the three dogs, whose eyes are not quite as big as wagon wheels or windmills. Their vivid individuality convincingly links the real, the historic, and the fantastic, giving a new, distinctly American life to the tale. Moser's reincarnation of this story is as magical as any fairy-tale transformation. Andersen would be envious. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Dismayed that tales of wonder and magic are set in foreign lands and distant times," Moser has chosen to ignore all but the skeletal plot of Andersen's original story and to rewrite it making use of American characters and settings and a mellifluous Southern voice for the narration. Andersen's hero becomes Yoder Ott, a Confederate soldier on his way home from the Civil War; the old witch is changed into a wily mountain man and the princess is the henpecked mayor's beguiling daughter, Elvira Abernathy. Most mysterious are the large-eyed dogs, which in Moser's rendering are both realistic and wonderfully magical at the same time. With characteristic clean lines and rich paintings, the book's design is as splendid as its recast story. Moser's work breathes new life into an old classic, from its arresting cover to its satisfying ending. All ages.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.