Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen

by Ken Setterington (Retold by), Nelly Hofer (Illustrator), Ernst Hofer (Illustrator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887764974
Publisher:	Tundra
Publication date:	09/01/2000
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.44(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

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.

Editorial Reviews

ger 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