{"product_id":"the-little-match-girl-strikes-back-isbn-9781536233353","title":"The Little Match Girl Strikes Back","description":"\u003cb\u003eIt only takes one strike . . . A powerful, beautifully illustrated feminist reworking of the classic fairy tale, from award-winning creators Emma Carroll and Lauren Child\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"You’ve got a lot to say for a little match girl.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the streets of Victorian London, Bridie uses her wit selling matches to help feed her family—but no matter how hard she works, it’s never enough to stave off hunger or keep her ailing mother safe from the factory’s toxins. When a street-side accident leaves Bridie with only three matches, the strike of each one sends her magically tumbling into visions of a brighter, more hopeful future. Realizing she has the power to change her own fortune, Bridie urges the ill-treated factory workers to protest and strike, achieving something remarkable through unity and courage. A far cry from the doomed little girl in Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, Emma Carroll’s spirited heroine brings new life to this empowering retelling, inspired by historical events and featuring Lauren Child’s bold, stylish black-and-white artwork with vivid spots of red. Author and illustrator notes, along with vintage photographs, offer enlightening context for readers at the end.Bridie is an energetic, likable narrator, and it’s satisfying to follow her quick-moving adventures. . . The gritty East End snaps to life in Lauren Child’s textured illustrations. Modeled on period photographs, they mix gray and black patterns with bursts of telltale red: Bridie’s hair, a candle flame, the bow on a Christmas wreath. . . . It’s the right message not just for 1888 but for 2023, with workers once again taking to the picket lines to demand a fair deal.\u003cbr\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen tale casts the little Matchstick Girl as a social reformer. . . . Artwork throughout includes creative typographic styling and black-and-white illustrations with pops of red for Bridie’s hair and match flames. An author’s note reveals the factual basis of the story.\u003cbr\u003e—Kirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInformation about the devastating effects of white phosphorous on workers’ health and the effectiveness of collective action to implement change are woven into a brief and engaging story led by a charismatic heroine. Child (the Clarice Bean series) provides b\u0026amp;w illustrations accented by a fiery red that bring Bridie vividly to life.\u003cbr\u003e—Publishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this British import, Carroll skillfully transforms Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” into an entry point to labor history via the London matchgirls’ strike of 1888. . . Child’s illustrations emphasize Bridie’s snap and spark with scratchy black lines and bold, stylized pops of fire red. . . . Older readers and fans of the Enola Holmes films will quickly twig to the factory working conditions and discussions of workers’ rights leading up to the strike, though this engaging tale is accessible to a wide audience.\u003cbr\u003e—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe conclusion is not only more satisfying than the original, but more authentic. Stylized black-and-white illustrations use accents of red to punctuate the action, creating an open and accessible format for a surprisingly timely look at workers’ actions. . . . This sophisticated tale is likely to generate conversation in school and public libraries about 19th-century factory working conditions.\u003cbr\u003e—School Library Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarroll takes the story of this significant event in labor history and uses it as the armature for her own version of Hans Christian Andersen’s weeper. . . The mash-up of history and Andersen-tale works beautifully, especially on the metaphorical level with light, enlightenment, warmth, and energy battling it out against darkness, ignorance, chill, and despair. Child’s illustrations, collages in black, gray, and red with a rich use of pattern, incorporate text at certain points to create an arresting, graphically dynamic page.\u003cbr\u003e—The Horn Book\u003cb\u003eEmma Carroll\u003c\/b\u003e is a multi-award-winning author with a background as an English teacher. Her stories are often magical and always led by a cast of impressive female characters. “It didn’t seem fair to me that the match girl dies in the end,” she says of the original fairy tale. “So I decided to write my own version, where she has a name, a loving family, and her own hopes and dreams.” Emma Carroll lives with her husband and two terriers in the Somerset hills of England.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLauren Child\u003c\/b\u003e has authored and illustrated many picture books, including \u003ci\u003eThe New Small Person\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAbsolutely One Thing\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Dog with Nice Ears\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as the Charlie and Lola, Ruby Redfort, and Clarice Bean series. She has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. She says \u003ci\u003eThe Little Match Girl Strikes Back\u003c\/i\u003e “beautifully merges fairy tale with fact, delivering a piece of history that has real resonance for us today.” Lauren Child lives in London.\u003cb\u003eChapter One\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e THE BORROWED SLIPPERS\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce upon a snowy New Year’s Eve, a story began. It was called \u003ci\u003eThe Little Match Girl\u003c\/i\u003e and was sold, beautifully bound between chestnut-hard covers, at bookshops across the land. The story itself was so sweet and sad, people would snivel into their hankies upon reading it, and soon it became famous the world over. It made the man who wrote it very rich indeed, though I don’t suppose he’d ever met a real match girl in his life. If he had, he’d have known we weren’t all pretty things with fair curls and tiny, freezing hands, and that most of us were fed up with being hungry all the time. We didn’t want people feeling sorry for us; we wanted a fair chance at a decent life, and to one day be able to tell our own stories, from our own mouths. This author hadn’t done his research, not properly. If he’d bothered to talk to one of us, he’d know that even little match girls have names.\u003cbr\u003e   My mam had called me Bridie, short for Brigid, the only Irish patron saint who was a woman, and a brave, bold one at that. It was also my grandmother’s name. She’d died back in Ireland, so I never met her, but I had red hair just like hers, Mam told me. And the same bony knees and gruff laugh, and a way of stringing words together that made people stop and listen, which helped when it came to selling matches. I had her surname, too: Sweeney.\u003cbr\u003e   So, that’s me, Bridie Sweeney. I’m a match girl, just like in the world-famous story, though my version has a far better ending. But there’s no need to rush on, when you have the rest of my tale to hear first.\u003cbr\u003e   I lived with my mother and little brother, Fergal, in a drafty room above a pawnshop in London’s East End. The shop was in a tiny court, flanked on all sides by grime-streaked buildings in which other families, just like ours, lived and worked. All day and night, you’d hear fighting and crying and, sometimes, a bit of singing. When the sun shone, the space between the buildings was strung with laundry that never quite got dry. It amazed me to think that Queen Victoria herself lived in this same city, only a mile or so to the west. I bet \u003ci\u003eshe \u003c\/i\u003enever wore damp underclothes or got nibbled by rats in the night. But that was London for you: home to the very richest and the very, very poorest.\u003cbr\u003e   Luckily, though our living space was small, there were only three of us to share it. My father was long gone—a deckhand on a visiting ship, so Mam told me, and a gentle soul who’d cried more than the baby he’d left her with when he set sail back to Spain. We never saw him—or his tears—again.\u003cbr\u003e   As soon as I was old enough to yell “MatCHES!” I was put out on the streets to sell them. Near the docks, where we lived, the competition was fierce. Us street sellers outnumbered the rats, which was no mean feat. Thankfully, I learned the business quickly, and if I do say so myself, I was soon one of the best match girls around.\u003cbr\u003e   “You could sell flames to a fireman, you could!” Mam would say with a laugh.\u003cbr\u003e   Part of me was proud to be good at what I did. But that didn’t stop me from dreaming of bigger, better things. Top of the list was not being hungry all day, every day. A close second was for the match factory to pay their workers a proper wage.\u003cbr\u003e   For we were all in the match trade, Mam, Fergal, and me. My brother, at six years old, should’ve been in school. But, as had been the case when I was his age, paying the rent was our priority. And so Mam often kept Fergal out of school to work at making matchboxes. Hunger made us all fast learners. Once Fergal had collected the paste, wood, paper, and red Lucifers labels from the factory, he’d spread it all out on the kitchen table and not move from his seat for ten hours straight. On a good day he’d make one hundred matchboxes and earn just two measly pennies for his work.\u003cbr\u003e   What I never understood was that he \u003ci\u003eliked \u003c\/i\u003egoing into the factory, despite it being as grim a place as you could find. But Fergal insisted he’d made a friend there—an older boy called Kip.\u003cbr\u003e   “He’s got a very nice fat pet dog,” Fergal told me, which, as he was smitten with all animals, would’ve made the world of difference to my brother.\u003cbr\u003e   All told, gluing matchboxes wasn’t really hard work: that happened on the factory floor itself where women, like our mam, stood at benches for fourteen hours at a time and kept working until the poisons they dipped the matches into made their teeth fall out.\u003cbr\u003e   Selling matches on the city streets, I at least got some air, even if it was syrup-thick city air that made your chest tighten and your nose-pickings turn black. London’s streets swarmed with barrow boys, crossing sweepers, beggars, bruisers, lords, do-gooders, ladies holding their skirts above the muck, each and every one of them needing candles to read by, a stove lit, a soothing puff on a pipe. You couldn’t get anywhere in this life without a light, and for that light, you needed a match. Walking the cobbles, yelling, “Flames for a farthing!” I was certain people needed my matches as much as \u003cbr\u003e   I needed their coin. It wasn’t just about a little box of wooden matches: I was selling them comfort, possibilities, hope.\u003cbr\u003e   “Mine are \u003ci\u003emagical \u003c\/i\u003ematches,” I’d insist. “One strike and you’ll be in a better place. I guarantee it!”\u003cbr\u003e Like they had for my grandmother, the words tripped easily off my tongue. I’d spin stories of far-off lands where no one ever felt cold, of lights that never dimmed, of flames the color of rainbows.\u003cbr\u003e   “These matches, my friends, will transform your life!” I’d tell the passersby.\u003cbr\u003e   Many would shake their heads and walk on. Those with children in tow might slow down briefly before dragging their charges on. Plenty more would buy my matches. And some poor souls, hope sparking in their exhausted faces, clearly wanted to believe what I said: that these matches would change things for the better.\u003cbr\u003e   I wasn’t daft enough to believe it myself, though. Not then.","brand":"Candlewick","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301163389157,"sku":"NP9781536233353","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781536233353.jpg?v=1767740274","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-little-match-girl-strikes-back-isbn-9781536233353","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}