The Wild Swans

 ''Beside the cave, nettles grow, emerald green and young. Snow white, swan white butterflies lay their eggs on the young green shoots of these nettles. You must pick them with your bare hands. No gloves. The nettles will bite. Next, you must take them in bundles and stamp them with your pretty bare feet. Stamp them until they make flax and this you must spin to a delicate thread, fine as a spider's filament. When you have this thread you must knit eleven shirts, one for each swan, one for each brother, fine as thistledown. When eleven shirts are made, and not until then, you must throw one over each white swan's shoulders and then, only then, they will be free.'‘

A moving retelling of the beloved tale by Hans Christian Andersen, exquisitely illustrated and narrated by Jackie Morris. A true gem for every bookcase. 

I've always been a fan of fairy tales. Princesses. Wicked stepmothers. Clueless fathers. Brothers who need tending. The dark and mysterious forest. Magic spells.

This story has all of these things. It's an old folktale, though you probably know best the version by Hans Christian Andersen.

I won't be surprised if this is your new favorite version of the story.




Jackie Morris has taken the short story and expanded it into a 175 page tale, complete with rich characters and a magnificent setting.

It's illustrated into a beautiful treasure of a book.




The plot? The king and his wife and their twelve children are very happy until the queen dies.




Soon after, the king meets and marries a strange woman in white.




Inexplicably, the king hides his children from their new stepmother. When she learns of the existence of the children, the stepmother finds them and turns the brothers into wild swans.




The beautiful princess must sew shirts for each of her eleven brothers in order to restore them into humans. And, while she sews, the princess must not speak or her brothers will die.

It's a rich, beautiful story. So happy I got to read and review this book.