Danish poet and novelist Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is best known for the dozens of fairy tales he wrote, including "The Little Mermaid," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Snow Queen." Andersen's sense of fantasy, power of description, and acute sensitivity are strikingly evident in his autobiography. Andersen masterfully depicts the extreme poverty of his provincial childhood and the international celebrity of his later years, and also provides insights into the sources of many of his most famous tales.

Young Hans Christian knew how life should be--just like a fairy tale. But, while he was growing up in Odense, Denmark, his life didn't seem much like a fairy tale. Although everyone was telling him to stop daydreaming and find a job in a trade, he found fame writing fairy tales like "The Little Mermaid," "Princess on the Pea," and "The Emperor's New Clothes." A Fairy-Tale Life tells the story of Hands Christian Andersen, the world's best-loved teller of tales.

Beloved by generations of children and adults around the world for tales such as "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Emperor's New Clothes," Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) revolutionized children's literature. Although others before him had collected and retold folk stories and fairy tales, Andersen was the first to create the stories himself, instilling a previously stilted genre with new humor, wisdom, and pathos. Drawing on letters, diaries, and other original sources (many never before translated from the Danish), Wullschlager shows in this compelling, extensively researched biography how Andersen's writings—darker and more diverse than previously recognized—reflected the complexities of his life, a far cry from the "happily ever after" of a fairy tale. As we follow in his footsteps from Golden Age Copenhagen to the princely courts of Germany and the villas of southern Italy, Andersen becomes a figure every bit as fascinating as a character from one of his stories—a gawky, self-pitying, and desperate man, but also one of the most gifted storytellers the world has ever known.

All was sunshine--all was spring! The vine hung in long trails from tree to tree; never since have I seen Italy so beautiful. I sailed on Lago Maggiore; ascended the cathedral of Milan; passed several days in Genoa, and made from thence a journey, rich in the beauties of nature, along the shore to Carrara. I had seen statues in Paris, but my eyes were closed to them; in Florence, before the Venus de Medici, it was for the first time as if scales fell from my eyes; a new world of art disclosed itself before me; that was the first fruit of my journey. Here it was that I first learned to understand the beauty of form--the spirit which reveals itself in form. The life of the people--nature-- all was new to me; and yet as strangely familiar as if I were come to a home where I had lived in my childhood.

“If you like, I’ll tell you the story of a boy who learned to fly.” Through an enchanted conversation with a young girl in a horse-drawn coach, Hans Christian Andersen shares his life’s struggles, dreams, and triumphs—whose threads can be found woven into his greatest stories. He tells her about the “fairy tale of his life” and how the son of a shoemaker became a celebrated writer. Heinz Janisch paints a sensitive portrait of Andersen and his literary work. Maja Kastelic has developed a well-suited illustration concept for this story that combines sumptuous art of a picture book with elements of a graphic novel. Thus, for the first time, H. C. Andersen’s life and work become a fascinating collage in picture book form. A moving, inventive story about the life of Hans Christian Andersen.

Fantasia Barrino, star of the 2023 film The Color Purple, tells the story of her astonishing rise from hopeless high school dropout to American Idol superstar in the inspirational New York Times bestseller Life Is Not a Fairy Tale. In one moment, with one tearful performance of "Summertime," the nineteen-year-old Fantasia captured the hearts—and the votes—of millions of American Idol fans. Her powerful voice and independent style made her an overnight national sensation. But life wasn't always sensational for Fantasia. At the age of seventeen, despite the promise of her extraordinary voice, Fantasia was in danger of becoming just another sad statistic: an uneducated, unmarried teenage mother living in the projects. But Fantasia had been raised by two strong, influential women: Both her grandmother and mother are preachers, and she was raised with an unshakable faith. In Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, Fantasia speaks—with a spirit as strong as her voice—about what it takes to believe in the power of one's self. She turns all that she's learned into uplifting life lessons, including: • Recognize your gift • You made your bed, now lie in it • Give props where props are due • Like mother, like daughter • It ain't about the bling Fantasia keeps it real with her sassy, self-confident style and down-to-earth advice, making us laugh and cry with her. Life Is Not a Fairy Tale is more than just a celebrity success story. It's a book of revelations that will inspire everyone to reach for their greatest potential.

The 2005 bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth is an opportunity to re-evaluate the achievement of one of the great figures of the fairy tale and storytelling tradition, a beloved writer famous for The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and The Red Shoes and many other now classic tales. Jack Zipes broadens our understanding of Andersen by exploring the relation of the Danish writer's work to the development of literature and of the fairy tale in particular. Based on thirty-five years of researching and writing on Andersen, this new book is a welcome reconsideration of Andersen's place and of his reception in English-speaking countries and on film.