Snow Queen Week: Christian Birmingham

I didn't realize when I planned this week as Snow Queen Week that so much of the world would already be buried under record amounts of snow. I hope my readers are warm, cozy and safe and that the weather clears soon enough to make holiday travel possible. I merely think the tale is a wonderful companion to tomorrow's Winter Solstice. I try to offer a balanced blog, too, for those with other belief systems who don't celebrate Christmas (although I do!).


Unlike last week when I offered so many novelty items for Frog Prince Week, this week will have an abundance of books. The last few years have produced a few absolutely beautiful renditions of the tale by modern artists. One of my favorites is Christian Birmingham, who is more readily available in the UK and usually published a year earlier there than here in the states. He is also fortunately a prolific illustrator and some of his projects are fairy tales, such as Snow Queen.


Birmingham's work is impressionistic and he uses light beautifully. He has illustrated many Christmas stories, including Wenceslas: The Eternal Christmas Story, The Night Before Christmas and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. (He seems to pick a lot of stories with snow in them.)

He has also illustrated Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid and The Classic Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen.


The images came from Books Illustrated Ltd: The Fine Art of Illustration, the gallery that sells Birmingham's original works.


For those of us for whom original artwork is out of the budget, the Snow Queen book is affordable and available at the Amazon US and the Amazon.UK stores.