HIS FAIRYTALE LIFE

One luminary of children’s literature pens a picture-book biography about another.

Once called “the Hans Christian Andersen of American children’s literature” by Newsweek magazine, Yolen honors that great Danish author of literary fairy tales. Contemporary readers may know only a handful of Andersen’s hundreds of stories—those about “an Ugly Duckling, the Snow Queen, a mermaid who loved a prince, a princess who could feel a pea under twenty mattresses”—but Yolen pays tribute to his legacy, which has unquestionably influenced her own career. As she references those enduring tales in the context of his greater body of work, Yolen sensitively recounts how Andersen’s story—“more like a fairy tale than a life”—was marked by hardship, ambition, creativity, and longing. The beauty of her writing astounds, perhaps especially at the breathtaking line that he “lived the single long sentence of his life till its end,” the double meaning of the word sentence searing in its poignancy. Throughout, Boynton-Hughes’ illustrations rise to meet Yolen’s achievement, with myriad references to Andersen’s stories embedded like easter eggs for readers to find in her detailed but never cluttered spreads. She especially excels at delineating real and imaginary vistas as she depicts Andersen’s life, his stories, and his memories and imaginings through layered, inviting compositions.

A treasure.