Denmark’s perfect storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen combines dark moments of genius with lighter moments of fantasy and is taken to the hearts of children and adults alike. ‘Folk Tales for the Ever Curious’ is a book cover that ties his bittersweet fable, ‘The Little Match Girl’ up in a nutshell.
The dark, didactic and hauntingly strange nature of Hans’ stories manages to captivate all generations, as he's able to make all his readers experience the sorrows and joys of his writings. His books make a fresh addition to any child’s growing library but are also worthy of space within an adult’s collection.
This book cover is aimed at the intellectual adult as an embodiment of the short yet sobering story to the Christmas tale roster in ‘The Little Match Girl’. Hans sheds new light on the invisibility of the poor in his aching story of a street child who is only saved by the visions of her grandmother she experiences in delirium before she freezes to death out in the cold.
An icy, damp and dirty feel is emblazoned across the cover that echoes the streets for which the child wanders and the smoke flowing unceasingly from a small match into a formation of hair curls creates an obscure outline for the grandmother who is visualised. The absence of her facial features manages to heighten all of the curiosity about the material within the book’s pages. Fragmented typography, rendered by hand, epitomises the harsh narrative this true classic has.
