MinaLima Edition: The Little Mermaid & Other Fairy Tales | Review
For those zealot Harry Potter fans, you should know who/what MinaLima is... if you don't — they are a design and illustration studio company based in the UK, who are probably most known for doing the designs for the Harry Potter movies. They've partnered with Scholastic to issue their edition of the Harry Potter series, which are illustrated hardcover editions, with interactive designs.
They've also partnered with HarperCollins to do a classics series of books; currently there are 8 of them, and this is one of them (I have all 8... am waiting for Peter Pan to be shipped to me from the UK). I'm starting off my reading with the only book in the series that is a collection of short stories: The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales.
All of the MinaLima books are basically the same. They are hardcover with no dust jacket, and the designs have a very specific look that is distinguishable to their company. The books have different illustrations of course, but all of their books have most of the same "interactive" designs. In this book, the turn dial shows the mermaid in the ocean, swimming ashore. I don't know why they decided to name it with the Little Mermaid in the title instead of just Fairy Tales.
The books are printed on quality paper, but a lot of the interactive pages are printed on this thin brochure-type paper, with a glossy print. This is how all the MinaLima books are though.
This book is the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and there are 12 of them in the book. The first one is The Little Mermaid — which is different and a lot darker than the Disney version. Some of the stories are a lot darker than the Disney version of living "happily ever after" — like The Little Match Girl who ends up frozen to death on the street on New Year's Eve from cold and hunger; there are elements of a Christian-God theme throughout the stories. Personally, I felt most of the illustrations were very mediocre compared to other quality illustrated collector's editions. These are not adaptations of Andersen's stories, but translations of his original work instead... so some of the stories themselves seem mediocre too.
I got my 8 HarperCollins classic MinaLima editions while Amazon was doing their buy-2, get-3 deal... which they've ended. A lot of book titles were eligible. I placed two separate orders to take advantage of the deal. I got 6 books, but only had to pay for 4. One of them, Peter Pan, wasn't available directly from Amazon anymore, so I had to get it from a third-party seller (in the UK, no less!)... but I used my award points from my Prime card, so it only cost me like $12. I didn't get any discount on The Wizard of Oz book, but at $25, it was still less than the retail price.
The 12 fairy tales in this book are:
- The Little Mermaid
- The Nightingale
- The Ugly Duckling
- The Swineherd
- The Tinder Box
- The Princess and the Pea
- The Emperor's New Clothes
- The Red Shoes
- Thumbelina
- The Steadfast Tin Soldier
- The Little Match Girl
- The Snow Queen
The 8 HarperCollins Classics, MinaLima Edition series are:
- The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
- The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
- Beauty and the Beast, by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve
- Peter Pan, by J. M Barrie
- The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
- Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
- The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling
