30 Books Like The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales

I have a brother who is fifteen years my junior. When he was small, I often read him stories. One of our shared favourites, read over and over, was Sendak’s Wild Things. It’s a masterpiece.

He usually wrote the text, as well as making the wonderful pictures, and the text is short, simple, rhythmic, and beautiful. Sendak was a poet as well as an artist.

Think about it: a child of five and a young woman of twenty, reading the same book, poring over the illustrations together, and both having a whale of a time.

If you know a child of picture-book age who doesn’t own Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are—buy it for them!

My dad gave me these books too. For the same reason—he had loved them.

What child wouldn’t?—A baby, lost in the jungle, is threatened by a tiger. A wolf pack rescues and raises him. His school-teacher is a bear and his mentor a black panther, Bagheera. (I loved Bagheera.)

Today, Kipling is often called "racist." I can’t totally defend him, but—he could easily have made Mowgli a white English lord, as Burroughs did Tarzan. Instead, Kipling made Mowgli the child of poor Indian villagers—and also handsome, athletic, courageous, strong, honourable, and fiercely intelligent. Racist?

Not all the stories are about Mowgli. "Rikki-tikki-tavi," a favourite, is about a mongoose. Another is "Quiquern," set in the Arctic. Classics.

When I was seven, my dad bought me this book for Christmas. He’d loved it as a child and wanted me to have it too.

I loved the book as much as he did.

Dad gave the stories he loved to the daughter he loved—and, originally, Kipling wrote them for the daughter he adored. He read them to her at bedtime, and she insisted on them being told in exactly the same words—or "just-so"—each time. Which explains the book’s odd title.

The stories pretend to explain "how the leopard got his spots" and "how the camel got his hump." Like my dad before me, I read them over and over.

And just to break your heart, Kipling’s beloved daughter died at six and broke his heart.

When I was ten, I collided with the Greek myths and was left all of a heap.

For at least a year, I thought of little else but these wonderful stories. I wrote my own versions, I drew them, I was obsessed. Hermes was my favourite (and still is). Wings on his heels! Wings on his hat!

A deep love of myth and folklore has stayed with me through my life. Many years later, I wanted to introduce my younger brother to the myths and came across this book. It’s superb, especially with Charles Keeping’s powerful illustrations.

The Greek gods were the powers of the universe: fire, wind, sea, earth; love, hate, jealousy… This book, written by authors who also deeply loved the myths, makes you feel their power.

This is a great anthology of contemporary Scots writing ranging from more classical Scots like my own short story Inrush at Nummer Fower to racy urban Scots like Irvine Welsh’s A Soft Touch. I love it because it showed me that our language is vital, contemporary, and alive today as well as being a brilliant historic literary language. It was like a revelation to me, and it stayed with me too.

I first discovered the author of Trainspotting in this book. James is also a brilliant Scots writer and shows that in novels like The Fanatic and The Land Lay Still. He and Matthew Fitt, also a fine poet and novelist in Scots, also produced the imprint Itchy Coo which has published excellent children's books in Scots, some from new authors, others with Scots translations of famous European collectors of Fairy Tales such as Hans Christian Andersen… show more.

The main reason I’m recommending this book is “The Little Mermaid” (the original version, not a sanitized later edition or off-the-mark Disney interpretation). I loved fairy tales as a kid and “The Little Mermaid” is my favorite because it doesn’t have a happy ending. (Not for the mermaid, at least.) I loved that just because we think things should happen a certain way doesn’t mean they will. The mermaid thought she was fated to be with the prince. But all her planning and sacrifice and suffering didn’t change the possibility that the prince was fated to be with the woman he chose. It was an early and valuable lesson for me on seeing things from a different perspective, and inspiration for one of my own short stories.

I love Jackie Morris’s introduction about the author of this book's life story. I found it inspiring and heartwarming to learn that it was written by a twelve-year-old girl’s prodigy child. 

I understood how the girl's genius captures the natural world's mystery, fantasy, and wonder and expresses it with crystalline words.

In order to really understand Disney history, I felt that I had to learn more about all of the ideas that Disney has explored and shelved. I could not believe my eyes when I discovered Charles Solomon’s volume on that very subject.

This book is one of a handful that changed my life as it led to a life-long fascination for the “hidden art” of Disney. Along with John Canemaker’s Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists, it is one of the two books that led me to write my own artbooks. I still re-read it from time to time up to this day.

This book is like stepping into a time machine with your little ones and emerging into a time long ago.

One of the things I love about this story is the timeless quality and rich layers of storytelling. Kids love it because of the characters, magical settings, and adventures, while adults will relate to the universal themes and find something new to relate to with every reading.

In a fast-paced world, sometimes it’s nice to escape into the classics. 

I always like reading anything about day-to-day living in China. In this book, I loved the descriptions of what life is like in rural China, eg making their own reed shoes and building their own roofs. On the surface, this book is about the idyllic life in the countryside. However, it is set during the cultural revolution but so subtly described in the back-drop that it is perfect for the target audience. We often read about the people banished to the countryside, and this book tells me what happens to them when they arrive.

I also enjoyed it as it is a translated text, so there is a sense that this is authentic.