Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales (Leather-bound Classics)

Absolutely perfect I can’t wait to read these fairytales to my son at bedtime. The cover is very nice and very eloquently decorated. I love the colors of the blues and pinks and green altogether. The outer pages are a beautiful gold with an iridescent accent. and there are so many fascinating stories. I can’t wait great addition for the price. Definitely recommend buying.

Cantebury does it again with another beautiful book!!!

This is a review of the kindle edition of Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales. I notice that most of the reviews for it are for the hardcover edition. Paper and print quality for this edition were not an issue. The version I had was free of any illustrations except for the cover art. I was reading an older speech or essay by Daisaku Ikeda in either the World Tribune or Living Buddhism a while back in which he referred to a story by Hans Christian Anderson called “The Silver Shilling.” It occurred to me then that not only had I never heard of this particular story before, but I had never read any of Hans Christian Anderson’s stories in their original format. By this, of course, I mean a good translation as they were originally written in Danish. This book has no mention of who the translator was. There are 127 stories in this collection of which I only know about ten or twelve, and not all of them very well. Even of the ones I thought I knew pretty well, some as they are presented here are so different from the frequent retellings you hear most often as to be almost unrecognizable. “The Red Shoes” for example is much different from the version you usually see. “The Fir Tree” is probably the story I know the best. It usually finds its way into Christmas anthologies because of the little fir tree’s experience one year as a Christmas tree. It is substantially the same as the story I know. The designation of fairy tales for these stories is surprising, as fairies are not mentioned in no more than three of them and elves in perhaps as many as five. Much more common are stories featuring birds, flowers, or inanimate objects who talk and act very much like people. In one case there is a bottle neck that has a surprisingly long story. There are also several life stories of pretty much average people; some of them live good lives and end by going to heaven and meeting someone they had lost. Others do not live so well and die very unhappy. There are three or four stories of boys and girls who played happily together as children but were later separated in one way or another. Some of these children were later reunited. Others drift away and never find each other again. Angels feature prominently in some of the stories. Almost all of the stories have a moral of some sort. There is also an unexpectedly large number of stories of the lives of prominent artists or writers, occasionally as viewed by the flowers or birds that lived in their yards. Most of these were Scandinavian artists so I didn’t recognize many of them. They almost invariably died young, however.

Beautiful book! I did not think the font was too small as others mentioned. I am excited to give this to my brother for his firstborn

this edition of andersen's fairy tales is visually stunning and seems quite sturdy, with crisp pages and printing and a fun choice of colors on the binding. the text is indeed tiny, so along with how thin the pages are it feels like reading a bible. i like the idea of the images used for the end pages but the image quality as it's printed is atrocious, blurry and pixelated, similar to this publisher's leatherbound edition of grimm's fairytales but worse. for the text size and end pages i might have returned it, but it does contain more stories than i've seen in a collected works of andersen before. i wouldn't mind the book being a little bigger if they upped the text size, but i can live with this.

Classic stories from the source! I bought this so that I could read it to my children before bed. They really love the stories and I feel like it's better than watching their movie counterparts. I feel like the morals are still applicable even in this modern age and perfect for young listeners/readers. The stories aren't that difficult to read however they do read better when spoken aloud adding emphasis when storytelling. Pros: All of the Fairy Tales we know in one beautifully bound book Very easy to read, even better when read aloud Cons: Pages are a bit on the thinner side and can tear easily if mishandled Overall: The book is a great gift for a young reader, an eager listener, or for someone who just wants to add this beautiful book to their libraries!

This collection is amazing! I'm a huge fan of Hans Christian Andersen. He wrote my two favorite fairytales: The Little Mermaid and Thumbelina. The book itself is gorgeous. Its got these beautiful illustrations on the cover and on the back. The pages are golden lined and it comes with a ribbon bookmark. The cover is leather-bound and just looks beautiful. I took photos of the table of contents so people reading this review can see what stories are included. The most popular stories it includes are The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, and The Princess and the Pea. If you want more, it's got over 100 stories in it. When I'm done reading this book, I will be displaying it on my bookshelf because it's to pretty not to. I can't wait to buy more collections from this company. I'm totally getting the Grimm Brothers one.

Exceeded my expectations. Beautiful addition to my now growing library.