Inger was a little girl but she was a bad person. This was obvious even when she was very small: she enjoyed catching insects and tearing off their wings without any pity for the poor creatures. When she was a bit bigger, her parents sent her to the country to a good family. Here, she became very refined and, going to visit her parents, decided to walk on her bread rather than in the marsh so she would not dirty her shoes. And this is where her real story begins... Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

Back in print, an astonishing novel of art, obsession, and the secrets kept by two very different women In Kathryn Davis’s second novel, Frances Thorn, waitress and single parent of twins, finds herself transformed by the dazzling magnetism of Helle Ten Brix, an elderly Danish composer of operas. At the heart of what binds them is “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf,” the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a prideful girl who, in order to spare her new shoes, uses a loaf of bread, intended as a gift for her parents, as a stepping-stone, and ends up sinking to the bottom of a bog. Helle’s final opera, based on this tale and unfinished at the time of her death, is willed to Frances—a life-changing legacy that compels Frances to unravel the mysteries of Helle’s story and, in so doing, to enter the endlessly revolving, intricate world of her operas. The ravishing beauty and matchless wit that have characterized Davis’s work from the beginning are here on full display. The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf is a novel as thrilling in its virtuosity as it is moving in its homage to the power of art, a power that changes lives forever.

The most beloved and popular collection in the realm of juvenile fiction. Each tale entertains, teaches and leaves a mark on the reader's heart and mind. Andersen blends together gentle humour, irony and fantasy to bring us characters that have enchanted readers through the ages. The best feature of these stories is that they teach useful lessons without being overtly moralistic. Utterly delightful!

Coming of age in pre-World War II California and Colorado brings tragedy to Molly and Ralph Fawcett in Jean Stafford's classic semi-autobiographical novel, first published in 1947.

A collection of Andersen's stories, including "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Fir Tree, " and "The Money Pig."

Some fairy tales everyone knows-these aren't those tales. These are tales of kings who get deposed and pigs who get married. These are ten tales, much neglected. Editor of Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, Kate Wolford, introduces and annotates each tale in a manner that won't leave novices of fairy tale studies lost in the woods to grandmother's house, yet with a depth of research and a delight in posing intriguing puzzles that will cause folklorists and savvy readers to find this collection a delicious new delicacy.Beyond the Glass Slipper is about more than just reading fairy tales-it's about connecting to them. It's about thinking of the fairy tale as a precursor to Saturday Night Live as much as it is to any princess-movie franchise: the tales within these pages abound with outrageous spectacle and absurdist vignettes, ripe with humor that pokes fun at ourselves and our society.Never stuffy or pedantic, Kate Wolford proves she's the college professor you always wish you had: smart, nurturing, and plugged into pop culture. Wolford invites us into a discussion of how these tales fit into our modern cinematic lives and connect the larger body of fairy tales, then asks-no, insists-that we create our own theories and connections. A thinking man's first step into an ocean of little known folklore.

The acclaimed author of Labrador (awarded the Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman) now presents a story of two women who come to grips with themselves and with each other. A psycho-cultural-sexual history of the 20th century, a short course in the opera, and a philosophical--even religious--passage from despair toward redemption.

"The essays address the reception of the Grimms' texts by their readers; the dynamics between Grimms' collection and its earliest audiences; and aspects of the literary, philosophical, creative, and oral reception of the tales, illuminating how writers, philosophers, artists, and storytellers have responded to, reacted to, and revised the stories, thus shedding light on the ways in which past and contemporary transmitters of culture have understood and passed on the Grimms' tales."--BOOK JACKET.