An Illustrated Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales: The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Princess and the Pea and many more classic stories (Classic European Fairytales) Hardcover – September 15, 2014

Beautiful book. Illustrations were outstanding. A book you can read to your children & grandchildren & pass down to them. Colors are vibrant

This is a beautiful book and the illustrations are wonderful! I am a book lover and though I no longer have small children, I couldn't resist. You will love this collection!

My 8 year old Frozen loving girl was thrilled to get this as a gift. I was looking around for a collection with Snow Queen or a stand alone children’s version of the story and couldn’t get a good feeling if this collection had it until it arrived. Happy to share a table of contents photo for reference for others. We look forward to reading through this book with its beautiful illustrations.

Amazing, text is great, but it’s classic. Illustrations are top! Amazing, haven’t seen any better edition. Highly recommended. Got one for my child, and few more for gifts later!

I purchased this book to donate for a good cause. In the description on the Amazon site it mentions the ugly duckling and I thought this would be good for children who might be bullied and show that they can really become beautiful. When I received the book it did have some of Hans Christian Andersen's amazing fairy tales but didn't include the ugly duckling. Maybe I misread the description. I had purchased 2 copies. One for myself and one for the charity. I had already donated the book before I had looked at my copy. So buyer beware if you think this story is included in this volume. It's not a complete volume of his work, only a treasury. I gave it 5 stars because it is a beautifully illustrated book. I had purchased the hardback version. I haven't read any of the stories yet so I don't know how closely to the original they are.

I would like to start by saying the illustrations in this book are absolutely stunning! I had to buy it when I saw the beautiful pictures! I really wanted a book with lots of amazing pictures to read to my girls. My girls love fairy tales. I wanted most of all Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid story. I loved that story as a kid and wanted to share it with my girls. I was so excited when it arrived and immediately read the little mermaid. But.. I was more than disappointed in this version...The pictures were gorgeous! But the story was lacking in the most important part, her gaining a soul in the end. The story started out like the classic version and although it was shorter it still had a talk where she asks her grandmother about souls and it told only humans have them. The story continues and eventually she throws herself in the sea to become sea foam but, this is where it is stupid, instead of saying she could look down and see the people and is told she has the chance to gain a soul and basically to go heaven someday, it says something very stupid along the lines of "her goodness could still be seen in the world around them". This is definitely not exactly what it said but that is basically what I read. Why in the world have a short version bring up souls if she never got one in the end?? This made the whole story so sad because she basically died for nothing. And she died. Truly died. There was no afterlife. Maybe for some people this wouldn't be a big deal, but me believing in the afterlife this really killed the whole story and because I bought the book mainly for that one story I just couldn't keep it. I loved the rest of the stories and really wanted to keep it by just adding my own ending to the mermaid tale but the end just kept bugging me.So to anyone wanting to get this, the pictures are amazing and if that is the only reason you want this book you will not be disappointed! If you want the classic stories do not get this book. It is shortened making some stories completely different. I thought every story was just fine (although one went very quickly and skipped a ton), even the little match girl, but the little mermaid ends terribly and I personally think that makes this book not worth getting.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well made this book is. It's bound well, with a sturdy thick cover that's linen wrapped. The illustrations are classic and beautiful. Every page has an illustration. Some are full page and some are smaller illustrations. The stories are beautiful. My children have loved reading these together.

All illustrated characters are reasonably modest, including the mermaids. Plus, all the illustrations are lovely.