Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen (Sneedronningen), first published in 1844 as the centerpiece of the second volume of his New Fairy Tales, is the tale of his that most resists the standard fairy-tale machinery. It has seven separately titled chapters. Its protagonist is a girl who rescues a boy. Its villain is an emotional condition more than a person. Its central image — a shard of an evil mirror lodged in a child’s heart — is one of the most enduring metaphors in 19th-century European literature.

It is also one of his most read-aloud-able stories, if you take it in two sittings.

The seven chapters, briefly

1. The mirror and the splinters. A devilish mirror that shows the world distorted shatters; pieces fly across the world; some lodge in human hearts and eyes.
2. A little boy and a little girl. Kay and Gerda, neighbors, best friends, share a rooftop garden between their windows.
3. The Snow Queen. A splinter enters Kay’s eye and heart. He becomes cold to Gerda. The Snow Queen, passing through the city, takes him away on her sled.
4. The flower garden of the woman who could conjure. Gerda begins her journey to find Kay. She is delayed by an old woman who enchants her into forgetting.
5. The prince and the princess. Gerda travels further, meets a clever prince and princess who help her.
6. The little robber girl. A young robber girl, unsentimental and tough, gives Gerda her reindeer and sends her north.
7. What happened in the Snow Queen’s palace and what came of it. Gerda finds Kay frozen, weeping over an unsolvable ice-puzzle. Her tears melt the splinter; he weeps; the splinter falls out. They go home, grown but unchanged.

The whole tale, depending on translation, runs 16,000–22,000 words. It is long. It is also worth every minute.

What makes it uncategorizable

Most fairy tales operate on a single moral axis. Andersen’s tale operates on at least three:

• The redemptive friendship axis (Gerda saves Kay).
• The cold reason vs. warm feeling axis (the Snow Queen’s palace as a place of pure intellectual abstraction, the children’s garden as a place of feeling).
• The journey of small kindnesses axis (Gerda is helped at every step by minor characters — flowers, animals, the robber girl, the Sami woman — who ask nothing in return).

The “happy ending” is unusual: Kay and Gerda return home unchanged in age but aware of having grown. The final image — sitting on small stools, holding hands, in the rooftop garden where they began, as the cuckoo clock strikes — is one of the gentlest endings in the canon.

Reading aloud

We recommend splitting it into two sittings, ending the first night at the end of chapter 4 (the magical garden) on the cliffhanger of Gerda escaping the enchantment. The second sitting (chapters 5–7) is the longer half, but the pacing is brisker once Gerda is properly on the road.

For children: best for 7+. The themes (a friend who has gone cold, a journey that requires patience, the redemptive power of weeping) land with much more weight at that age than at 5.

A translator’s note

The standard English translation (Mary Howitt, 1846) is now in the public domain but reads stiffly to modern ears. The Tiina Nunnally translation (Penguin Classics, 2005) is significantly more readable aloud and we recommend it for any family reading this seriously.

— Source: Andersen, H. C., “Sneedronningen,” in Nye Eventyr. Andet Bind, C.A. Reitzels Forlag, Copenhagen, 1844.