HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Among the most engaging of the spate of Andersen bios published for his 200th birthday, this handsomely designed Danish import presents the writer as a compulsively outgoing, if hypersensitive, fame seeker who “saw a tale in everything he experienced,” and “lived in the world of his imagination, where there was always plenty of food and everything was radiant and abundant.” Highlighting significant figures—particularly family members, of which he had an unusually colorful allotment—and incidents in his earlier years, Varmer follows him from cradle to grave, tracing influences on his tales, relating telling anecdotes and describing how his ingenuous self-absorption charmed patrons and friends. In all, it makes a lighthearted tale—further brightened by Brøgger’s award-winning, kaleidoscopic renditions of Andersen, the paper cuts he often produced as he told stories and fancifully rendered scenes from his life. (bibliography) (Biography. 10-14)