The Little Mermaid

Starred review from April 4, 1994
No matter how often it's retold, no matter how many illustrators tackle it, Andersen's classic tale of the lovelorn mermaid never grows stale. Unlike the sanitized Disney version, the original isn't particularly cheerful: the mermaid loses not only her voice, but also her prince and her life (although she's given a reprieve in the form of a chance to earn an immortal soul). It is, however, exquisitely written--richly layered, evocative, and full of hope, pain and yearning. Hague's Rackham-esque style suits the intense emotions of the prose; his slightly muted palette seems an extension of Andersen's imagination, capturing as it does the filtered half-light of the mysterious undersea world thronged with exquisitely sinuous merfolk. At once lavishly detailed and fanciful, his illustrations distill the haunting beauty of the century-old story, a story as fresh today as the day it was penned. All ages.

May 4, 1998
Isadora's (Isadora Dances) haunting retelling of this classic tale leaves Disney's cotton-candy version far behind. Hewing faithfully to the darker themes of Andersen's original, Isadora relates the bittersweet story of the little mermaid who falls in love with a human prince and finds her love unrequited. Doomed by the sea witch's nefarious contract to become sea foam, the mermaid rejects the villainess's offer to save herself by murdering the prince, and instead martyrs herself for love. It's a fey, powerfully moving tale, exquisitely illustrated. While the text spools out against squares of sea-washed greens and grays, Isadora's ethereal watercolor portraits register a wide range of emotions, from the sweet innocence of the mermaid's yearning captured in a face tilted toward the water's surface, to the eerie image of her five sisters floating on a moonlit sea, offering up a knife to slay the prince. Isadora displays a dramatist's sense of lighting, endowing many scenes with the visual presence of a stage play. The sea-witch, for instance, is doubly frightening by virtue of her face being illuminated as if by footlights, casting cruel shadows and highlights across her leering visage. Isadora's superb artistic efforts outshine the somewhat pedestrian retelling, however, which lacks the emotional resonance of the illustrations. Ages 4-8.

August 2, 1993
If the entries in Stories from Hans Christian Andersen (see review above) dilute the headiness of their models, this volume presents a close-to-pristine translation of one of Andersen's most popular works along with highly charged and rather adult illustrations. The mid-19th-century translation by Mary Howitt (a friend of Andersen's) fully embraces the story's sense of yearning, courage and tragedy. Only minor changes have been made, according to a publisher's note, chiefly, ``eliminating some brief passages of heavily detailed description and moralizing.'' The prose here tends toward a somewhat removed elegance as opposed to a homely, conversational style. The art, however grand and lush the palace scenes, verges on the lurid when Santore trains his brush on the mermaid. She is eroticized, much like the figures in Charles Micolaycak's Orpheus. Young mermaid fanciers might do better with Mary Pope Osborne's Mermaid Tales from Around the World (reviewed June 28). Ages 8-up.

Starred review from September 6, 2004
As she has with previous interpretations of classics, Zwerger (Alice in Wonderland
) works from Bell's faithful translation of Andersen's text, with no happily ever after. Here the mermaid must watch her beloved prince marry another, knowing that she herself will die the following day. Zwerger's exquisite watercolors bring to life the mermaid's world. At a window in the castle of her father, the sea king, the mermaid gazes out into the blue-green distance, wondering what life above must be like; while fish dart in and out, she pets one absently. Watery meadows of jade and turquoise suggest empty silence and foreshadow the mermaid's sacrifice to the sea witch—in exchange for a human form, the heroine must trade her voice, "a lovelier voice than anyone on earth or in the sea." Zwerger represents the mermaid's shunning of her undersea home with a depiction of her overgrown garden, once the heroine's pride and joy. Other memorable scenes, framed in a white border, depict the mermaid towing the prince to shore after a shipwreck and, later, as dawn breaks on the day she is to turn to sea foam, the mermaid looks resolute, clothed in a glorious golden gown that resembles fish scales. Zwerger's parting scene, an aerial view of the prince's ship sailing away, amplifies the bittersweet yet redemptive conclusion, in which the little mermaid, now a "child of the air," may earn an immortal soul. The illustrations may well provide endless hours of reverie. Ages 4-8.

January 27, 2020
This slim volume holds both Andersen’s much-read tale of a mermaid who sacrifices her voice for a chance to win the human prince she loves and the story of a “true-hearted” tin soldier with one leg who falls in love with a paper ballerina. Both focus on doomed, unreciprocated love, their characters’ sacrifice and loyalty resonating with spiritual meaning. Hoekstra’s adept translation captures the author’s signature baroque detail: “The fruit shone like gold and the flowers looked like burning flames, their stems and leaves forever flickering.” Andersen’s vivid imagined world and curlicued spiritual plots overshadow Crawford-White’s occasional black-and-white illustrations; their style recalls the detailed images popular in adult coloring books. Ages 7–10.