Classics Considered

The Snow Queen byElena Ringo http://www.elena-ringo.com [ CC BY 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons " His stuff always makes me cry.  :( "  That was my summary note, on finishing "The Snow Queen."  It's true; either his stories have aged well, or I have aged hardly, but Andersen always gets to me.  I shouldn't have put this one off, and I'm glad it came early on in Deal Me In (while it's still winter in the Northwest!).   "The Snow Queen" was the original inspiration for Frozen .  I love the story of Frozen , and I'm not sorry they deviated from the original, but "The Snow Queen" is as good a story as it is a different one.  It starts with a magical mirror that distorts the viewer's sight, so that if they look into it, all they see is bad things.  The mirror breaks into pieces that get scattered over the world and find their way into people's eyes and hearts, making them cold hearted.  At the same time, two neighborhood chil...

Not gonna lie...I cried.  :( This is an original fairytale by Hans Christen Andersen  (who also wrote the lesser-known "The Wild Swans," probably my favorite fairytale of all time).  Most people know "The Little Mermaid" from the Disney film, and initially the plots are very similar.  A young mermaid, forever fascinated by the world of humans, is finally allowed to rise to the surface of the sea on her fifteenth birthday.  As it would happen, she falls in love with a human prince, who is also celebrating his birthday on board a ship.  And - as it always does - the little mermaid's love is a lost cause, because when she tries to escape the world she was born into, it comes at a terrible price. I almost just called her "Ariel," but Andersen's mermaid, prince, and Sea King are anonymous throughout the story.  It makes it even more poignant, I think, and maybe that is the power of these old fairytales - you are allowed to project your own characterizat...