Stories of the Little Match Girl

I found several versions of "the Little Match Girl" by Danish writer Hans C. Andersen on the internet today and read 3 of them to Sienna straight from the iBook at bed time. The story is about how a little girl had to sell matches on a new year’s eve. She struck the matches, trying to keep herself warm. The flames brought her extremely beautiful dreams but couldn’t save her life from the extreme cold...

Here is the story about how we turned to this classic short story. We have a composer friend H. We used to play on our car stereo his symphony "Dream of Dunhuang." Sienna was fascinated by one of the chapters in particular. She repeated the part hundred of times and could even hum the melodies.

So we told H about how Sienna had become his youngest fan. Apparently touched, the Maestra later gave us another CD, "the Little Match Girl," a symphony he composed for ballet. We didn't get to play it to Sienna until yesterday while we had the long drive with F. We had to play the piece because we were going to the Maestro’s house for screenings of his most recent concerts later in the afternoon.

Sienna might like the new CD or she might not. In either case, we needed to tell Maestro about her true reaction to his music. It's difficult to get a 4-year-old to even listen to a symphony, let alone getting her to like it and yet still to like a particular one. As it turned out, no effort on our part at all. Sienna fell for "the Little Match Girl" instantly. We played at least 6 times upon her repeated requests. I don't know why and how. She didn't know the story about the match girl and our story with our composer friend.

In the afternoon, Sienna got to watch the ballet "the Little Match Girl" danced by a Russian company on DVD in Maestro’s house. At the presence of the Maestro himself, Sienna sat there watching the whole 45-minute show without an intermission. She has no way of knowing what a great treat she was getting.

How blessed! My baby's life is as beautiful to her as it was to the little match girl but through the mini flames. She needs to know stories and music like this to at least remotely experience the complexity of human emotions which, unfortunately, contain by and large, pain and despair... What could be a better time than around the new year's day to let the stories unfold themselves, in the book and in real life?