From School Library Journal
Grade 1-5–"Hans told lies, too. About his past life. About his present life. He called them fairy tales." Yolen uses these words at the start of her simple, wistful, and winsome portrait of a very complicated and, by most accounts, very unhappy man. From the humble, one-room shoemaker's house of his birth to his tortured schoolboy days, from the haunting trauma of his father's death to the eventual recognition of his genius, readers follow this persistent artist through the landscape of 19th-century Denmark on his quest for some kind of personal and professional peace. This volume, with its patrician wallpaper and sepia-tinged pastel pictures framed with gentle arches, is handsome where its ugly-duckling subject was, by his own reckoning, most assuredly not. In her affectionate, fairy-tale-flavored narrative, Yolen pairs events from Andersen's life with excerpts from his stories, providing new and different interpretations of the tales in this context. Full-page paintings depict the realistic scenes, while smaller vignettes illustrate the fictional ones; these oval-shaped pictures seem to let viewers peer right into the meanderings of Andersen's yearning imagination. The quotes take on new and different meanings when readers see them connected, both visually and verbally, to real experiences and emotions. With a well-measured note from the author and a meticulous listing of excerpt sources, this is a carefully crafted, lovely, and loving tribute to the father of the modern fairy tale.–Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CT

From Booklist
Gr. 1-3. This lively picture-book account of Andersen's life concentrates on his childhood and youth, which included a lengthy "ugly duckling" phase before his poverty and privation were overmatched by his hard work and determination. Meanwhile, Andersen developed his talents as a writer and eventually achieved international fame and literary immortality. Andersen grows from boy to man in a series of sensitive and often dreamlike pictures. Gracefully drawn and softly lit, the illustrations create a sense of another world through sepia and pale blue tones sparked with brighter colors. One large, full-page picture appears on each spread, facing a page with a few paragraphs telling his story and a passage from his fairy tales accompanied by a smaller picture illustrating the passage. The quotes from the tales relate to stages and events in the writer's life, but children are free to draw their own connections. This handsome biography is a fine choice to display or read aloud on April 2, which is International Children's Book Day and (no coincidence here) Hans Christian Andersen's birthday. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
He was the son of a cobbler-awkward, funny-looking, and perhaps a bit crazy. But Hans Christian Andersen went on to become the most beloved children's writer of all time. Here in rich detail that includes quotes from Andersen's own stories, Jane Yolen explores his youth and how his words were inspired by life experiences. His was a childhood that saw the death of his father, an early love for the theater, and the burning passion to become a writer against all odds. Lushly illustrated by Dennis Nolan, The Perfect Wizard is the ideal selec- tion to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Andersen's birth on April 2, 2005.

About the Author
Jane Yolen is an acclaimed children's book author whom Newsweek magazine called "The Amer-ican Hans Christian Andersen."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He was the son of a cobbler-awkward, funny-looking, and perhaps a bit crazy. But Hans Christian Andersen went on to become the most beloved children's writer of all time. Here in rich detail that includes quotes from Andersen's own stories, Jane Yolen explores his youth and how his words were inspired by life experiences. His was a childhood that saw the death of his father, an early love for the theater, and the burning passion to become a writer against all odds.
Lushly illustrated by Dennis Nolan, The Perfect Wizard is the ideal selec- tion to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Andersen's birth on April 2, 2005.

Author Bio: Jane Yolen (www.JaneYolen.com) is an acclaimed children's book author whom Newsweek magazine called "The Amer-ican Hans Christian Andersen." She lives in Massachusetts.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

"Once upon a time, a baby was born on a bed that was made from a coffin platform," begins this illuminating picture-book-biography of Denmark's favorite storyteller, which deftly blends Andersen's real life events with his imagined world. Starting with this probably apocryphal story that Andersen liked to tell about himself, Yolen (Owl Moon) immediately sets up the mingling of fact and fiction that so characterized the writer. The son of a cobbler and washer-woman, Andersen called his life "a beautiful fairy tale," and Yolen selects facts from his history that reveal both the harshness and wonder of the life he led. Each spread contains a full-page sepia-toned painting that illustrates the episode related about his life, opposite; in addition, Yolen selects a relevant quotation from one of Andersen's stories, accompanied by oval spot art. For instance, when Yolen describes the boy as "a gawky, long-legged lad... a stork among pigeons. A cuckoo in the nest. An ugly cygnet in a hatch of ducks," Nolan (Fairy Wings) portrays the tall boy in his first stage role along with a quotation and spot illustration from Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling." The artist's work seems ideally suited to move fluidly from biographical moments to storybook images. Despite an unfortunate, cluttered design that tends to obscure Yolen's narrative (the quotes often appear in a larger font than the main text), the book intriguingly explores the fusion of an artist's work and life, and leaves readers with much to ponder. Ages 6-up. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-5-"Hans told lies, too. About his past life. About his present life. He called them fairy tales." Yolen uses these words at the start of her simple, wistful, and winsome portrait of a very complicated and, by most accounts, very unhappy man. From the humble, one-room shoemaker's house of his birth to his tortured schoolboy days, from the haunting trauma of his father's death to the eventual recognition of his genius, readers follow this persistent artist through the landscape of 19th-century Denmark on his quest for some kind of personal and professional peace. This volume, with its patrician wallpaper and sepia-tinged pastel pictures framed with gentle arches, is handsome where its ugly-duckling subject was, by his own reckoning, most assuredly not. In her affectionate, fairy-tale-flavored narrative, Yolen pairs events from Andersen's life with excerpts from his stories, providing new and different interpretations of the tales in this context. Full-page paintings depict the realistic scenes, while smaller vignettes illustrate the fictional ones; these oval-shaped pictures seem to let viewers peer right into the meanderings of Andersen's yearning imagination. The quotes take on new and different meanings when readers see them connected, both visually and verbally, to real experiences and emotions. With a well-measured note from the author and a meticulous listing of excerpt sources, this is a carefully crafted, lovely, and loving tribute to the father of the modern fairy tale.-Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CT Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews