The Little Match Girl Strikes Back, by Emma Carroll, illustrated by Lauren Child

 I read and reread Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales as a child, with more morbid fascination than true enjoyment, although I did appreciate how very good he was at making pictures in the mind.  The little match girl's frozen body, for instance, is still distressingly clear to me.  So it was somewhat cathartic to read Emma Carroll's re-imagining of the story, The Little Match Girl Stikes Back (Sept 2023 in the US, Candlewick), in which she isn't just a pathetic victim. 

Bridie comes close, though.  She is out in the snowy misery of 19th century London, desperately selling matches to help feed her little family (mother, herself, and her younger brother).  Her mother works at the match factory, which is its own hell of physical misery, pathetic wages, and phosphorous poisoning (not quite as bad as the poor radium girls, but close....).  And one day everything goes wrong for Bridie--hit by a carriage, all but three of her matches are ruined.  And one by one she lights them....and wishes.

The first match gives her a luxurious meal in a grand house, that leaves her no better off than before (the food not being real).  The second wish, though, is a catalyst for actual change.  She wishes "that rich people....didn't have everything while poor families like mine have nothing."  And magically, she meets in her dream a woman who is in real life a fierce advocate for the poor, and together they visit the match factory, where her mother is being fired.  The match fizzles out, but not the spark that has been lit, and the third match gives Bridie a vision of a possible future without desperate poverty and her mother's phosphorous poisoning that gives her hope that change is possible.

And so Bridie galvanizes the women of the factory to strike, and the advocate she met in her vision takes the cause up to a national level, and it succeeds. It's based on an actual strike, discussed in a non-fiction coda at the end of the book, and the mixing of this real and important history with the fantasy and reality of Bridie makes for an engrossing and memorable story.  The illustrations and decorations add beautifully to the fierceness and desperation of Bridie's life.

It's not your regular sort of fantasy--the magic is real, but, like the matches, burns only in flashes.  But they are very bright flashes.  And it's not your regular sort of straight historical fiction, because the story depends on the magic.  Offer it to young readers who like both, especially if they happen to be fascinated by labor horror stories of yesteryear, and love reading about kids who make change happen.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

The Little Match Girl Strikes Back is eligible for this year's Cybils Awards in Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction and has not yet been nominated.  Here's where you go if you want to show love for this one, or many of the others still waiting for their call....