When I saw that for Penguin’s 80th birthday they were releasing 80 books for 80p each, it was all I could do to restrain myself and not immediately buy all of them! I chose this one as I remembered reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales when I was younger and I thought it would be a nice nostalgia trip.

The only story in the book that I recognised was The Princess and the Pea, which was significantly shorter than I remembered, at only 2 pages long. I think I must previously have read an adapted version which was made longer, or possibly it was split up with lots of pictures.

The other stories in the book were new to me, and slightly darker than I remembered the fairy tales being. You can tell that each story has a moral to it, but the subject matter was way more grown up than I remembered!

Still, I really loved reading the short stories, even if they weren’t what I expected.