My First Picture Book of Hans Christian Andersen Stories
ISBN 0 86163 039 4
© Award Publications Limited 1975
Spring House, Spring Place
London NW5, England
Reprinted 1984
Printed in Belgium
This vintage picture book collection of retold Hans Christian Andersen stories was illustrated by Rene Cloke and published by Award in 1984 as part of their Funtime Library series. For a list of the other books in the series (and links to my reviews), see Funtime/Fun Time Library Series.
Like the other books in the series, this picture book is a large hardcover book of approximately 33 cm tall by 23 cm wide. The cover is white with illustrations of characters from the stories within and contains a small decorative floral square in black (the illustrations and floral square are a copy of the 1975 cover – see Availability and reprints, below). The characters don't appear in these poses in the story, but are otherwise faithful to the interior illustrations. One significant addition is the image of the butterfly pulling Thumbelina's water lily pad.
The back cover is white with a small central illustration of a singing nightingale perched on a pink rose, a picture that appears as the first illustration for "The Princess and the Swineherd".
Front and back matter
The front and back endpapers are a solid apple green colour, and the front loose endpaper is white, containing a plain bookplate of two dark lines beneath "This Book Belongs To" and the copyright information.
The title page has pictures of Thumbelina, the Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep, and the Ugly Duckling (despite the latter character not appearing in this collection).¹ The title page also serves as a contents page, noting the three stories that appear within:
Thumbelina
"Thumbelina" takes up the bulk of this book, the retelling and accompanying illustrations covering 8 pages.
In this retelling a "young wife" is given a "barley corn" by "a wise old woman who is really a fairy" and when it grows a lovely flower and she kisses it, "the flower opened and there in the centre sat a tiny little girl".
The woman was delighted. "I will call her Thumbelina," she decided, "for she is scarcely taller than my thumb. I will make her a cradle from a walnut shell with flower petals for sheets."
Thumbelina is kidnapped by a toad to be a bride for her son and left on a water lily leaf while they decorate their home for her (with "kingcups and [bulrushes]"). (Note that the text in my edition reads "bullrusles" in bold, a publishing error that is corrected in the 1986 reprint I own.)
When Thumbelina cries, a "kind fish" gnaws through the stem so she floats away "where the toads could not follow her", then a butterfly and a cockchafer each pull her further away. In the summer she lives in the woods but when winter comes "there was no shelter for her and she grew so cold that she had to wrap herself in a leaf". She "begged a little corn to eat" from a field mouse who lived at the edge of a corn field and the mouse was very kind and invited her in to live with her.
"You may live in my house all the winter," she said, "you can help me to keep it clean and tell me stories; I love to listen to stories."
The field mouse wants to marry Thumbelina to her neighbour, the mole, but Thumbelina doesn't like him. The mole tells them about a dead bird in one of his tunnels and Thumbelina pities the bird and takes a rug to cover its dead body but finds it alive. There is a hint of a reference to Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper here:
"He is a silly swallow who sang and chirped throughout the summer," grumbled the mole, "and now he is starved and frozen."
Thumbelina values what the mole despises:
"Thank you for your songs, dear bird."
Thumbelina nurses the swallow in secret and when he leaves in the spring he begs her to go with him but she feels beholden to the field mouse and stays. Her wedding to the mole is planned for autumn.
When the autumn came, Thumbelina begged the field mouse to let her wander once more in the fields before she had to live underground with the mole. The swallow appears and this time Thumbelina leaps at his offer to escape. They travel to the land of the king of the fairies and Thumbelina is made queen and given a pair of butterfly wings.
Hans Christian Andersen's "Thumbelina" is a much longer tale than the English version given here, but although truncated it is a fairly faithful retelling.² A few key differences are:
- Andersen's mother figure goes to an "old witch" for help in having a child and pays her money for the barley corn
- The toads leave Thumbelina on a water lily pad while they go to prepare "the best parlour under the mud" for her, but with "reeds and yellow water lilies" rather than king cups and bulrushes (possibly just a different translation of the same)
- In Andersen's story the cockchafer kidnaps Thumbelina and intends to marry her, rather than pulling her water lily like the butterfly
- The mole's judgement of the swallow is less harsh in Andersen's tale, but when joined with the field mouse's comments the message is the same
- Thumbelina doesn't want the field mouse to feel sad in the original, whereas here Thumbelina fears she will be 'vexed'
- In Andersen's story the field mouse doesn't give Thumbelina permission to go outside at the end; she sneaks out to say farewell to the sun
- Thumbelina's wings in Andersen's tale are from "a large white fly" rather than a butterfly
- In this retelling there is no change of name for Thumbelina at the end, and no framing narrative with the swallow telling this story to the narrator.
In illustrations, Thumbelina first appears in a delicate pink tulip, dressed in the same clothes she wears throughout the story – a blue cap, long-sleeved white shirt covered in a blue tunic, a long pale blue skirt and blue shoes, later joined by a long yellow cape. Her mother is also dressed in white and blue, her skirt featuring a teardrop pattern used by Cloke in other illustrations, and the white cap, tippet, and apron she wears lending her a country aspect.
The toads look rather friendly, with big eyes and wide triangular smiles. Thumbelina cries on a water lily leaf with a stunning water lily beside her, common water crow-foot growing out of the water behind her, and two worried fish looking at her. Unusually, the illustrations forgo the butterfly that rescues her.
The next image we see of Thumbelina is her in a snowy landscape, brown leaves blowing about (and a brown leaf used for additional warmth atop her yellow cape), and rain sleeting down in diagonal blue lines across the page. She approaches the field mouse, who is sweeping her front door.
The mouse wears a simple orange dress and green neck kerchief. She uses Chinese Lantern plants as lanterns, one hanging above her front door, and one in the living room where she gathers with her guests.
The mole is a sprightly figure in Elizabethan garb, sporting a white ruff with red, black, and gold doublet, red and black striped breeches, and a red hat with gold feather. The swallow is beautiful, as swallows always are.
When the swallow comes to rescue Thumbelina she stands beneath a tall growth of wild chicory, and I wondered if Cloke chose to illustrate this plant at this juncture of the story for its symbolic association with endurance, determination, and hope.
When the swallow brings Thumbelina to her new home, the king of the fairies is standing in a white flower that appears to be an anemone or wild rose, framed by tall pink carnations. Plants sprawl across the double-page spread, and a painted daisy blooms on the far side. In a stroke of genius, the king has the wings of a swallowtail butterfly (specifically an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail). He also wears Elizabethan dress, sporting a gold crown, a white ruff, red sleeves and gold jerkin with a flower-like waist, puffy red trunk hose, gold hose for the legs, and red shoes.
The Princess and the Swineherd
In this retelling of Andersen's "The Swineherd", told over 3 pages, a prince wishes to marry a princess but is poor so all he can give her is a rose and a nightingale. She is disappointed with these presents, but the prince is not discouraged. He disguises himself and is employed by the king as a swineherd.
The prince-swineherd makes a magic cooking pot that shares the smells of what everyone in town is having for dinner and has bells that play "a merry tune". The princess loves it and is persuaded to give the prince ten kisses in exchange for it.
Next, the prince-swineherd makes "a rattle which played all the tunes in the world" and says she can have it for 100 kisses. This time the king catches them kissing and throws them both out. The princess wishes she had married the prince who offered for her, and the swineherd reveals that he is that prince but now "despise[s]" her because she rejected him when he was poor but would give kisses to a swineherd for a toy.
He went back to his own kingdom and shut his palace door and the Princess was left crying in the rain.
If we compare it with the original,² it is a faithful retelling, if greatly truncated. An interesting elision is that in this retelling, it is not known that the prince though poor is popular (with many ladies willing to wed him) and 'audacious', because the princess ranks above him as the daughter of the emperor. It's also unclear that both the rose and the nightingale had magical properties that are appealing to everyone except the princess (the rose offering a scent that frees one from sorrows and worries and the nightingale containing all the beautiful melodies of the world in its throat).
Another interesting difference is that in Andersen's tale the "merry tune" played by the cooking pot is labelled as a well-known tune that is the only song the princess can play (I'm picturing her musical skill as something like only being able to play 'Chopsticks'!), and his tale ends with a reminder of that song, which has the lines: "Everything’s gone, gone, gone!"
The first illustration is of the rose and the nightingale (an image repeated on the back cover of the book), then of the prince as swineherd bowing before a considering king. The king wears a golden crown and an ornate red doublet, a blue cloak with white ermine falling to the floor. He wears red breeches with doubled lace flounces, his yellow stockings tied with blue ribbons that match the blue rosettes on his black shoes.
The Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep
This story reminds me a lot of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" in its depiction of two toy-like figures that long to be together but are kept apart by a jealous figure.
In this retelling, told over 4 pages, the Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep are "[t]wo little china figures" that stand close together on a table.
They loved each other very much and would have been quite happy if it had not been for the Field-Marshal-Major-General-Corporal-Sergeant.
This "funny person" was carved into a cabinet panel and the "Chinese Mandarin, who was the grandfather of the Shepherdess" wants her to marry the cabinet figure.
The Shepherdess doesn't want to live "in a gloomy cabinet" and the Chimney-Sweep suggests they run away. They hide in a drawer and watch a "puppet theatre" with some playing cards but the Shepherdess finds it too sad so they decide to climb the chimney "out to the wide world".
The Chinese Mandarin wakes and they follow a shining star up the chimney, but at the top the Shepherdess is too frightened and begs to go back.
When they return, they find the Chinese Mandarin had fallen off the table when trying to chase them and lies in pieces. A rivet is put into his neck and now when the cabinet figure asks to marry the Shepherdess he can't nod his head:
so the two little china figures remained together on the table and loved each other for ever and ever
Like the other retellings, this follows the original quite closely, although there are necessarily some elisions from the truncation of the tale, and a few other stylistic changes. In the original²:
- the cabinet figure has "Billygoatlegs" in his name as "he had billygoat legs, small horns on his forehead and a long beard"
- the Chinese Mandarin is described as "the old Chinaman" and there is doubt as to whether he is really her grandfather and has the right to arrange her marriage
- the Shepherdess not only doesn't want to go into "that dark cabinet" but also believes the cabinet figure has eleven other porcelain wives in there
- the Shepherdess asks the Chimney-Sweep to run away with her, rather than him suggesting it to comfort her
- the reason they jump into the drawer is because the cabinet figure sounds an alarm that they are "absconding"
- the reason the play in the drawer upsets the Shepherdess is that it "had to do with two who could not have each other, and the shepherdess wept at this, for it was like the story of her own life"
- there is an additional discussion about hiding in a pot-pourri jar
- the Shepherdess blames herself for her grandfather's fate: "old grandfather is in pieces and it's our fault! I can never survive that" (rather than just feeling sorry for "Poor Grandfather")
- the ending is happy (but not "for ever and ever" as Cloke describes); instead: "they were devoted to each other until they fell to pieces".
Cloke's retelling is warm-hearted and enjoyable and the illustrations show faithful links to descriptions from the original story, including in the ladder the Chimney-Sweep holds and the roses and hat of the Shepherdess.
The first image is of the Chimney-Sweep and the Shepherdess standing close together, looking at each other lovingly. Both stand on white and gold plinths that show they are a matched set.
The second image is of the Chinese Mandarin. He wears white robes with a red and gold vest, red undersleeves, and a black, red, and gold hat, black and white slippers, and holds a black fan, with blue rim and pink flower on its back.
I felt the absence of an image of the Field-Marshal-Major-General-Corporal-Sergeant, and would have liked to have seen what he looked like, "carved in wood on the front panel of an old fashioned cabinet".
Instead we have a page that shows the Chimney-Sweep and the Shepherdess watching the puppet theatre amongst a pack of playing cards, then a page of watercolour blue, the top corner showing the Chimney-Sweep holding firmly onto a frightened Shepherdess as they perch atop the chimney, stars twinkling behind them, the bottom of the page showing a shadowy townscape at night.
The final image is of the Chimney-Sweep and the Shepherdess standing together amongst the broken shards of her Grandfather, the Shepherdess prodding his chest piece with her ribboned crook.
Summary, availability and reprints
This is a very interesting and enjoyable collection of retellings of Han Christian Andersen stories, and there appear to be a number of copies available online, partly in different versions.
My collection reviewed here is a reprint for the Funtime Library series. It appears to have been originally published in 1975 as part of the Fairyland Favourites series, where it was first titled as Hans Andersen: Thumbelina and Other Stories (or alternatively Hans Andersen Stories). That edition has a Ricky Rabbit in an autumn wind bookplate/copyright page (see my review of Nursery Stories), and a different title page from later editions:
I also have a copy of a third version, also for the Fairyland Favourites series (a 1986 reprint) that is titled My First Picture Book of Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. See my review of My First Picture Book of Tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
Footnotes
¹ Cloke did illustrate a retelling of "The Ugly Duckling" – it appears in a different book in the Fairyland Favourites series, My First Picture Book of Fairy Tales. Perhaps when Rene Cloke drew the artwork for the title page it was originally intended to join the three stories of this Hans Andersen collection. To read about Cloke's retelling and illustrations of "The Ugly Duckling" see my review of My First Picture Book of Fairy Tales.
² I've used the English translations available on Hcanderson.dk, the website curated by experts from the Hans Christian Andersen Center at The University of Southern Denmark in Andersen's home town, Odense. The texts are drawn from the 18 volume printed edition of Andersen’s complete works published between 2003 and 2007 under the title ANDERSEN. H.C. Andersens samlede værker. The head editor Klaus P. Mortensen published the edition on behalf of The Danish Society of Language and Literature (Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab). See Hcandersen.dk.