Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Fairy Tale Life of Hans Christian Andersen by Eva Moore

One upon a time - over one hundred years ago - there lived a little boy named Hans Christian Andersen. He was the son of a shoemaker, and he lived in the country of Denmark, in a little town called Odense.
Han's mother and father were very poor, but they did everything they could to make him happy.

Thus begins Moore's biography of Hans Christian Andersen written in a fairy tale format. The book is made up of short chapters about significant events in his life, from his childhood, through his infatuation with puppets, struggles in the world of theatre, to his emergence as a respected writer of fairy tales. Hans wrote not only fairy tales, but poems, a travel book about Italy and also translated French plays into Danish.

The chapters in the book are as follows:

A Play
The Comet
School
The Dancing Shoes
The Chinese Prince
The Danish Prince
Good-bye to Odense
Copenhagen
The Singing Teacher
The Elve's Sun
Master Meisling
The Writer, H.C. Anderson
"My life is a beautiful fairy tale"

There was a movie, a musical, made in 1952 about Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kay, and another more recently in 2003. Click on the link below to watch the trailer of Hans Christen Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale:
I have this DVD available for borrowing for any student who reads this book.


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