My First Picture Book of Tales of Hans Christian Andersen (Award Fairyland Favourite, Award, 1986, ill. Rene Cloke)

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ISBN 0-86163-196-X
© Award Publications Limited 1975
Spring House, Spring Place
London N.W. 5, England
Reprinted 1986
Printed in Belgium

This vintage collection of fairy tale retellings illustrated by Rene Cloke appears to have been originally published in 1975 as part of the Fairyland Favourites series with the title Hans Andersen: Thumbelina and Other Stories (or alternatively Hans Andersen Stories).

It was also published in 1984 as part of the Funtime Library series, titled My First Picture Book of Hans Christian Andersen Stories.

This edition, with the title My First Picture Book of Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, is again labelled a part of the Fairyland Favourites series but is a smaller size than the previous versions, measuring approximately 31 cm high x 23 cm wide. It also has a different cover from the earlier editions, dropping the decorative floral square and instead centering a pair of children in the clothing of the early 80s, reading this book, with the character of Thumbelina crawling out of the pages to join all the other characters already decorating the cover. In these images we also see for the first time the Prince-Swineherd's ingenious cooking pot with bells that plays a merry tune and shares the smell of what everyone in the town is having for dinner.

The front and back endpapers show a watercolour with a blue and green palette featuring four children playing around the base of a tree, accompanied by woodland flora and fauna.

The front loose endpaper contains a bookplate, featuring Ricky Rabbit (of Cloke's Nursery Stories collection) riding an autumn wind. The copyright information that usually appears on the front loose endpaper of Award books instead appears on the back loose endpaper of this edition, on a starry blue page decorated with characters from the stories. 

The title page features the same illustration as in the 1984 Funtime Library edition, the only difference being the title, which also appears in a different font style.

I have reviewed the stories and illustrations contained in this collection previously, so I won't do so again here. The stories are mostly typographically identical. To read about them, see my review of My First Picture Book of Hans Christian Andersen Stories.

There are only a few minor differences in this edition, mostly due to the change in size of the book, which necessarily squishes up some of the text and illustrations and cuts out some of the tops or bottoms of the illustrations of the former editions. Very little is lost (mostly just a few stalks of plants), but some differences worth noting are:

In "Thumbelina":

  • there was a publishing error in the line in my 1984 edition ("kingcups and bullrusles".) which is corrected here ("kingcups and bulrushes.")
  • the text on the penultimate page of this story has been lowered in a less pleasing way, now encroachng on the illustration of carnations
In "The Princess and the Swineherd":
  • the text in the 1984 edition was very close to the edges of the page – that is corrected here and looks better, along with some other minor changes to the placement of text

In "The Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep":

  • there are no typographical changes but half the townscape illustrated at the bottom of one of the penultimate page is cut off.