Customer Reviews

The Little Match Girl

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Classic story. Beautiful illustrations.
This is a sad book. A heavy book. The little girl lights the matches she is supposed to be selling on Christmas and with each match she has a vision of happiness but then the match burns out and she is left with the grim reality that she is cold and hungry and all alone on the street. Her last vision is her grandmother coming to get her and such a vision fills the child with joy.
Then we learn the little girl died.
My eldest daughter loved this book and thought it imparted much about the meaning of family and Christmas while my youngest cried and was terribly heartbroken at the end.

There are so many themes embedded in this text, and even though I disagree with the reading level because of those themes, it is an excellent book. The story appears to have a tragic ending, but not really. If you review the child's life before her death, she was very unhappy because of the environment in which she resided. The only family member she had loved, and whom had loved her back, (her grandmother)had already passed away. Even though she dies, she goes with a smile on her face because her last vision is her grandmother, whom is with when she passes.
This story does reference God a few times, but it is remarkably good and well worth the buy.

This is the story of a little girl who *literally* freezes to death on the street. She is alone, because she can't go home, because her father will beat her. Her only comfort comes from the hallucinations she has as she's dying. My 3 and 7 year old daughters received this as a Christmas gift. Without reading it first myself--I kind of remembered the title--I read it to them. At first, I kept thinking Andersen would bring this tragic story to some kind of uplifting end. I was horrified to learn that, nope, she dies right there on the sidewalk with nobody to care! I was mortified that anyone would send such a book to children. Obviously, the sender didn't read it first. When I discussed this book with my husband, what he took from it was that death had released this poor girl from the abject misery that was her life. He's right, but that's sure not the kind of thing I want to share with my children. We are avid collectors of Christmas books, but this one is going to "disappear" immediately. Rachel Isadora's illustrations are lovely, however.