The Little Match Girl

In the Get Ready to Shed Big Lugubrious Tears category, Hans Christian Anderson's heartrending story of the poor little match girl has always drummed up good business for Kleenex ™ and its competitors. In this Canadian adaptation, young Lily, pawing around her grandparents' attic on Christmas Eve, discovers a flute, which puts her grandfather into storytelling mode. Back in the days when horseless carriages were just beginning to appear, a young girl named Adriana and her Nana braved winter weather in their horse-drawn wagon to begin a hopefully better life in a new village. When a mean-spirited kid named Ben, bent on scaring the would-be "settlers," accidentally startles the horse, however (tragically sending horse, wagon and Adriana's Nana over a cliff), the young girl is forced to sell what few wares she owns--some matches, a bit of ribbon, a bowl--in order to survive. Anderson's original tale is here fleshed out to include narrative extras such as pond hockey (those Canadians, eh?) and a nicely limned moral battle concerning the proper treatment of our fellow humans, but the spirit remains largely intact (oddly, the video box claims the story has "one of the most glorious happy endings in all of children's literature"; the video version does have a revised happy ending, but in the original tale the little match girl freezes to death). Recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)