Elsa Beskow - Ollie's Ski Trip, Mini Edition

Elsa Beskow is a much loved Swedish author and illustrator of Children's books. We are so happy to finally have this beautiful collection of books in our store at Pappa Sven and we are sure you are going to love them too!

Six-year-old Ollie is given his first pair of real skis. As soon as the snow begins to fall he heads off into the woods and meets sparkling Jack Frost, who shoos away damp Mrs Thaw.

Jack Frost takes him on an adventure to the palace of King Winter. Ollie has a wonderful time in a huge snowball fight! But will Mrs Thaw return too soon for Ollie to enjoy the snow?

Age Range 4 - 6 Years

Hardback

172 x 127mm

32 pages

About the Author

Elsa Beskow (1874 - 1953) was born in Stockholm, Sweden to a Norwegian family. Elsa grew up with fairy tales all around her and started telling stories even before she could speak properly. As a child Elsa Beskow would spend hours drawing trees and flowers in spring and summer, and she was nicknamed 'Princess' by her siblings. She gained a wide knowledge of plants and flowers, and her illustrations as an adult retained a child's pure and wondrous view of nature.

Literature, music and art was the central focus of her very liberal home. She was raised to stand up for what she believed in, at a time when the Swedish womens movement was growing in strength.

These values are reflected in her children's picture books. The Flowers Festival, from 1914, argues for freedom of speech for everyone, and some suggest that Mrs Chestnut is depicted as pregnant – a daring thing to do at a time when the middle classes were of the view that pregnant women should be kept out of sight.

Elsa's picture books were inspired by her life and her surroundings. Her sons became models for her drawings of children. All her child characters had a basis in reality and she created one picture book for each of her sons. Elsa Beskow's family lived in an old wooden mansion in Djursholm, outside of Stockholm in Sweden. The house had a huge, wild garden from which Elsa drew inspiration for her wonderful images of flowers and plants. Nature is always prominent in her picture books: they are full of flowers, plants, trees, animals and mountains. She combined reality with fantasy and fairy tales; children meet elves and goblins, animals talk and acorns come to life. Elsa Beskow told her stories to her children and later to her grandchildren.