A review by amberhayward
The Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

4.0

Ok. I am pretty sure this is not the one I read, but the one I have is pretty old and probably not on here. I asked for a book of original fairy tales for Christmas one year and got this and could not have been happier. In it, there are a ton of unedited-for-Disney stories that range from pretty basic to totally bizarre. A favorite short one is "The Jumping Contest" in which a flea, a "jumping jack", and some other thing all have a contest to see who can jump highest. Whoever does gets to marry the princess. The jumping jack wins through some kind of cunning and even though I have no idea what he is, he gets to marry the princess. Huzzah! There are also some incredibly gory ones, including "The Rose Elf" in which an elf exacts revenge on a bad guy and includes a moderately graphic decapitation.