Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (Puffin Classics)

These are the original fairy tales, not the glossy recreations by Disney or others. Expect 'dark' turns in the story lines and some tales may not end the way you were told as a child, but the lessons are stronger.

This collection is translated by Neil Philip and illustrated by Isabelle Brent, (published by The Reader's Digest, 2004). For me, the illustrations are just as important as the ideas in story books. In this book, every page of text has a decorative border and of the 351 pages, 66 of them are colorful, full page illustrations. The animal and nature images are more realistically drawn than the human ones--the people tend to appear more flat and less detailed. All the drawings are framed by a wide, patterned border, which in some cases detracts from the charm of the central picture.

Not bad, but not perfect. While the language does reflect a lot of Andersen's imaginative and poetic genius, parts of the translation reveal an imperfect understanding of English idiom and punctuation. Also, proofreading was somewhat sloppy; sometimes the text appears to have been scanned rather than typed. Otherwise it was an enjoyable experience.

As a child my parents read these wonderful tales to me, in turn I learned to mimic and later read to my delight. I also have an album with the tales... from 1954! I purchased to enjoy again on my kindle whenever I have the urge to disappear into a wonder world.

Very sofisticated (really classic) edition. My 9-years grand daughter was delighted and impressed.I was happy that she felt happy. She is a good reader but mostly of contemporary stories like 'Harry Potter' and 'Nicolas ...'. So that classic was just on time.