As a child, my favorite fairy tales were those by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, not just because I grew up near a small Danish community in California, but because the stories were thrilling and maybe not quite as dark as those by the Brothers Grimm.
So as an audible.com subscriber I was happy to get the annual Christmas gift from the company: a free download of "The Snow Queen," narrated by Julia Whelan.
The company pitches it as the source material for the Disney movie "Frozen," which I haven't seen. But lovers of beautifully written fairy tales will enjoy it just the same.
The story, told in seven parts, begins with what will be the driving factor. A devil creates a mirror that magnifies in its surface only the ugly and bad of the world, twisting and diminishing the good and beautiful. The devil's minions try to take it to heaven to taunt God and the angels, but it slips from their grasp and plunges to earth, where it shatters into millions of shards, some as small as a grain of sand. When a bit of the evil mirror lodges in the eye or heart of a person, it freezes their hearts and makes their eyes see only the bad and ugly around them.
The story then shifts to two small children, Gerda and Kai, the dearest of friends whose houses are so close together that they can climb back and forth between the windows. But when bits of the evil mirror get into Kai's eyes and heart, he suddenly turns cruel toward Gerda, and when the Snow Queen appears in a blizzard of "snow bees" (snowflakes), he follows her.
Gerda mourns the loss of her friend, and sets off in search of him. Her adventures are many and entertaining, and narrator Julia Whelan does an excellent job of crafting the various vocal personalities, from the flowers and birds to humans, both good and bad, that Gerda encounters. My favorite is the little robber girl, who wants to keep Gerda as a pet, all the while threatening to kill her.
Aided by unlikely characters along the way, including a raven and a reindeer, Gerda makes her way to Snow Queen's castle, where her tears of joy melt Kai's frozen heart and his own tears wash the bit of evil mirror from his eyes.
There's a significant amount of Christian underpinning in this tale of good and evil. But mostly what's impressive is revisiting the detail Andersen has folded into this fairy tale.
AUDIO BOOK REVIEW
THE SNOW QUEEN. By Hans Christian Andersen. Audible Studios. Unabridged, 1 hour, 14 minutes. Narrated by Julia Whelan.
