An excellent compendium showcasing plenty of this great author's work. My favorite tale of his is The Little Match Girl. ( )

It's hard to rate a book with so many different stories, especially since it took me almost an entire year to read this, but I'll give it a shot.

To be honest, most of these fairy tales are forgettable, pointless, and/or just feel unfinished, as if Andersen sat down to write, lost interest a couple pages in, and moved on to something else.

Some, however, are very good. It seems like the sadder the story, the better the writing—I especially enjoyed The Little Mermaid, The Traveling Companion, and The Ice Maiden. There are several more I don't remember the titles of that I'm still thinking about; some of the choices these characters have to make are especially heartbreaking. Others I remember because the moral of the story is so outdated—like the one about the husband always being right.

Andersen seems to have a thing for inanimate objects coming to life, sad trees, winter, and the wind/moon telling stories. I think the number one lesson he has to teach us, though, is to not fall in love. Hardly anything good ever happens to his characters who sought love (at least, not until they die after much suffering and get their reward in heaven). ( )

I love fairy tales, especially Hans Christian Anderson. My favorites are The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl, Thumbelina, and The Steadfast Tin Solder. What I loved about this book is that it has the original writings in it, not the Disneyfied versions. I love reading the originals because they tell the true tales: Don't give up your life just for a man (Little Mermaid), Be kind to the homeless (Match Girl), and so on. What I really liked about this book is that it has small illustrations. Wat illustrations it has, as there are not many, are very intricate and tell only bits of the story. I especially liked how the stories are continuous. There are no page breaks between stories, they just flow right into each other. I also really liked that there is a table of contents so it is easy to find your favorite story. The themes of each story are different, but the main theme of the book is Hans Christian Andersons writing. ( )