The Wild Swans

by Ken Setterington and Hans Christian Andersen

Selected by the Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education as one of the 2004 Best Children's Books for the Year In the grand tradition of fairy tales, a king becomes lost in an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887766153
• ISBN13: 9780887766152
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Tundra Books (NY)
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.2" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 7 to 10 years
• Grade Range: Grades 2 to 5

Customer Reviews

Princess Elsie has to rescue her brothers from being wild swans

Once upon a time there was a king who became lost in an enchanted forest. There he encountered an old woman who agreed to show him the way home, but only if he agreed to marry her daughter. Although she was the most beautiful woman the king had ever seen, he feared that his bride-to-be was also a witch, so he agreed to the proposal of the old woman with one condition. The wedding would take place in three days and the king would go back to prepared. But while the preparations for the wedding were underway the king made sure that his twelve children, eleven princes and the young princess Elise, were secreted away where the new queen would be unable to find them. However, the king would go and visit his children each day and the new queen was suspicious. She followed the king and learned about the princes, so, being a witch she made white silk shirts for each of the princes with a magic spell sewn in that turned the princes into swans during the daytime. But the queen did not know about Elise, and the princess is determined to find a way to break the spell cast over her brothers. Author Ken Setterington has borrowed from various European folk traditions, including the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, to retell the story of "The Wild Swans." What we have here is a slightly more ambitious tale than most younger children would have likely heard before, so this is more of an intermediate level fairy story. What older students will find interesting is the way that the simple premise of the story becomes complicated: not only does Elise have problems finding a way to break the spell, but actually getting what she needs and being allowed to do it are both complicated along the way. The artwork by Nelly and Ernst Hofer is done in the delicate traditional cut-paper art of "scherenschnitt." The Hofers learned this folk art in their native Switzerland and have passed it on to their children back on the family farm in Ontario. There are over a half-dozen full page pieces, but the Hofers also do smaller pieces, sometimes down to a single figure, along with borders, so that there is always something for young readers to look at on every two-page spread. Young readers might be inspired to try their own hand a paper cutting, at which point they will find out how difficult the artform is to practice. There is a short section on the art of paper cutting in the back of the book, where we learn not only of the history of the artform but that the best-known kind of paper cutting, the silhouette, was named after Etienne de Silhouette, the vastly unpopular controller general of finances in France during the reign of King Louis XV who was so well known for being a miser that his name was used to describe anything that was cheap, such as paper profiles. But silhouettes are something most young would-be artists can probably handle.