The Little Match Girl

“The Little Match Girl” — is the most poignant of the stories told by Andersen.

 It is about a small poor orphan girl, forced to sell matches to passersby on the street. On the last day of the old year, the girl fails to sell a single match, despite not receiving a penny all day, and the little one is afraid to return home to the cold room in the attic, where her father will surely beat her. Undressed and barefoot, she sits on the snow behind the house and begins to light the unsold matches one by one. In the flickering flames, the girl sees beautiful images that have never been in her life: a warm stove, a festive table with a Christmas goose, a luxurious Christmas tree with thousands of candles… With these imagined pictures, the girl ascends to Heaven — “there, where there is neither cold, nor hunger, nor fear”…

The artist Lyudmila Pipchenko, who created drawings specifically for this edition, managed to convey this heart-wrenching New Year’s story. Bright tears of compassion well up in the throat as soon as you open the book…