Once upon a time a great White Bear tapped on the window pane of a poor man's cottage and offered to make him as rich as he was then poor, if he would only give him the youngest and most beautiful of his daughters. So begins this most romantic fairy tale, in which the four winds themselves play a part. It is an epic story of a bewitched prince and the determined girl who loves him; a tale of rags and riches, hags and heroism, magic and mystery, a curse and a quest, wicked trolls and some of the longest noses vou will ever have seen! Naomi Lewis explains in her introduction that this traditional Norwegian fairy tale was first collected by Peter Christian Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in their "Norske Folkeeventyr" in 1844. Sir George Webbe Dasent then translated it into English and published it in his "Popular Tales from the Norse" in 1859. This new edition, with only a few minor changes was shortlisted for the 1992 Kate Greenaway Medal. Patrick Lynch won the Mother Goose Award in 1987 for his illustrations in Alan Garner's "A Bag of Moonshine". He has also illustrated the Walker titles "Melisande" by E. Nesbit and "Catkin" by Antonia Barber.