The Snow Queen a personalised book with your child as the hero

High up under the roofs of a big old town, two children lived in two attic rooms that faced each other across a narrow gap. One was a girl called Gerda, and the other was a boy called Kai. Their families had put wooden boxes outside the little windows, and in the boxes grew peas and herbs and two rose bushes, one for each of them. In summer the roses grew so tall that they met in the middle like a green archway, and Gerda and Kai would climb out and sit beneath them, as close as brother and sister.

In winter the windows froze over, and they warmed copper coins on the stove and pressed them against the glass to make round peepholes. Then Kai's grandmother would rock in her chair and tell them stories. "Look at the snowflakes swarming," she said one evening. "Those are the white bees, and they have a queen. The Snow Queen flies where they are thickest. On winter nights she looks in at the windows, and the glass freezes into flowers."

Now, far away, a mischievous troll had once made a magic mirror. Anything good and lovely that it reflected looked small and ugly, and anything mean looked big. One day the mirror slipped from the troll's hands and broke into a million glittering splinters that blew all over the world. And on a bright summer day, as Gerda and Kai sat among the roses, Kai suddenly cried, "Ow! Something flew into my eye!"

It was a tiny sliver of the troll's mirror. Gerda looked and looked, but she could see nothing. Yet from that moment Kai was changed. He frowned at the roses. "That one has a worm in it," he said, "and that one is crooked. They're silly roses." He laughed at Grandmother's stories and teased Gerda until her eyes filled with tears. The splinter had gone right down into his heart, and his heart was turning cold as ice.

When winter came, Kai took his sled to the big town square, where the bravest children tied their sleds to the farmers' carts for a ride. While he was there, a great white sleigh came gliding into the square, driven by someone wrapped in white fur. Kai tied his little sled to it, and away it went, faster and faster, out through the town gate and into the whirling snow. Then the driver turned. It was a tall lady, shining white from head to toe. It was the Snow Queen. "Are you cold?" she asked, and she kissed him once on the forehead. After that Kai felt no cold at all, and he forgot Gerda, and Grandmother, and home.

Everyone said Kai must be gone for good, but Gerda did not believe it. When spring came, she put on her new red shoes and went down to the river. "Have you taken my friend Kai?" she asked. "I will give you my red shoes if you bring him back." She threw the shoes into the water, climbed into a little boat to throw them farther, and the boat slipped loose and drifted away downstream.

At last the boat floated up to a garden full of cherry trees and flowers, where a kind old woman in a big sun hat lived. She combed Gerda's hair with a golden comb, and with each stroke Gerda forgot a little more about Kai. The old woman meant no harm; she only wished for a little girl to keep her company, so she made all the roses sink into the ground. But she forgot the painted rose on her own hat. When Gerda saw it, she remembered everything at once. "Kai!" she cried. "I have stayed far too long!" And she ran out through the gate.

Autumn had come. A crow hopped up to her on the path. "Caw! Caw! I think I have seen your friend," he said. "A clever boy has married our princess." He led Gerda to a palace and in through the back stairs at night. But the young man asleep there was not Kai. Gerda cried, and the kind prince and princess listened to her whole story. In the morning they gave her warm boots, a fur muff, and a golden coach to carry her on her way.

In a dark forest, robbers stopped the shining coach. A wild little robber girl jumped down from the robbers' castle. "She shall be my friend!" she declared, and nobody dared argue with her. That night the wood pigeons in the rafters cooed, "We saw Kai. He sat in the Snow Queen's sleigh, flying north to Lapland." An old reindeer tied in the corner said, "Lapland is my home. I know the way." The robber girl looked at Gerda for a long time. Then she cut the reindeer's rope. "Off you go," she said gruffly. "Carry her to the Snow Queen's palace. And look after her."

The reindeer ran north across the endless snow, while the northern lights flickered red and green across the sky. They stopped at a little hut where an old Sámi woman of Lapland wrote a message on a dried fish, and then at the hot little house of the wise Finn woman. "Can you give Gerda the strength of twelve men?" asked the reindeer. The Finn woman smiled. "She needs no strength I could give her," she said. "Her own good heart is the greatest power there is."

So the reindeer carried Gerda to the edge of the Snow Queen's garden, and Gerda walked on alone. The palace was built of drifting snow, with windows and doors of cutting winds. Its halls were vast and empty and cold. In the middle lay a frozen lake, cracked into a thousand pieces. And there sat Kai, blue with cold, pushing flat pieces of ice about, trying to spell a word. The Snow Queen had told him, "If you can spell the word ETERNITY, you shall be your own master, and I will give you the whole world and a new pair of skates." But he could not do it.

"Kai! Dear Kai!" cried Gerda. Kai did not move. Then Gerda began to weep, and her warm tears fell on his chest and reached right into his heart. They melted the lump of ice and washed away the splinter of glass. Kai looked at her, and he burst into tears too, and the last speck of the troll's mirror floated out of his eye. "Gerda!" he cried. "Where have you been? And where have I been?" He looked around. "How cold it is! How huge and empty!" The pieces of ice were so happy that they danced, and when they lay down again, they spelled the very word the Snow Queen had asked for.

Hand in hand, Gerda and Kai walked out of the palace. The reindeer was waiting to carry them south, and wherever they went, the snow melted and the first green leaves appeared. They passed the Finn woman and the Sámi woman, and the robber girl rode up on a fine horse to wave goodbye.

At last they came home, up the old stairs and into Grandmother's room. Everything was just as it had been, except for one thing: they had grown a little. The roses were blooming in the window boxes, Grandmother sat reading in the sunshine, and it was summer, warm, beautiful summer.