The Snow Queen - A pretty princess book :-)

As a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, I incorporate Art Study/Art Appreciation into our weekly routine. There is a lot of value in that. But I think for young children, the most important way of "ordering their affections" towards art is to read beautiful picture books. I'm picky about children's books overall and illustrations are a big factor in what I choose to read to my kids. I try to include a large variety of styles of illustrations in our readings: classical paintings, modern cartoons, collage style, anything goes - if it's well done! And of course, you probably know I love a good fairy tale. So when I saw that there was a new illustrated version of The Snow Queen available, I had to have it.

The second thing I'm particular about with books is abridgment. Oh, how I hate to get part way through a book only to discover it has been defiled by abridgment or adaptation. I couldn't find any information before I received this book about whether it was unabridged or not. So when I received it, I nervously picked a couple random passages and compared it to the gutenberg.org version. It wasn't the same but it didn't appear to be missing anything or be watered down so my guess is that it is just a different translation but not abridged. Finally, I was able to get reading!

And it did not disappoint. While I can sing along to every song from Frozen, I had never read the Hans Christian Andersen story that it is very very loosely based on - until now. I'm not quite sure how they got Frozen out of it, but on its own its a very good story anyway. I read it just to myself first since I know now all of Andersen's tales end well but I will be reading it to both Lucy (6 yrs) and Jonah (4 yrs) sometime this winter and I really think they'll enjoy it. They asked about it every time I opened it up and spent quite a bit of time looking at the pictures over my shoulder (no, that's not annoying at all, ahem). It's a chapter book but there are lots of illustrations. And Sanna Annukka's illustrations are great.

They are Scandinavian in style but a bit modern and conceptual and just plain fun. I found myself stopping and really looking at them and thinking about what part of the story she was trying to convey several times. Overall, it's just a lovely book that makes me want to read it, to myself and my kids. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.