Matchless

Written by Gregory Maguire, based upon the story The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen, Matchless is a Christmas story about the poor battling against poverty and the cold. 

Frederik is a boy who keeps himself warm by keeping a secret. His mother is a seamstress to the Queen and one Christmas Eve, she is forced to leave Frederik on his own so that she might mend the Queen’s hem. Unknown to his mother, Frederik has created a small model village in the attic. Unfortunately his residents are in need of company and Frederik leaves the house in search of a discarded treasure that might serve as a boat to take his two citizens across the sea to find companions. As fate would have it, Frederik finds a discarded slipper, which, until recently, had belonged to a poor little match girl. 

Divided into four parts, Matchless is really a children’s book, one that can be easily read in about ten to fifteen minutes, as I literally just did. 

It’s a pretty little story as it takes Andersen’s tragic tale and sheds some light on it, by having the path of Frederik cross with the little math girl’s more than once, bringing a happy ending to the original tale of gloom and sadness. 

With pretty illustrations to accompany the images painted by the words, Matchless is a very beautiful little children’s story written very simply, but conveying powerful images and themes, some of which can become a little gloomy, but all in all it was a lovely little illumination of a classic tale.