Is there anybody who has never heard about “The steadfast tin soldier”? In Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, the one-legged tin soldier falls in love with a royal ballerina, then he is dragged from his small world and a adventurous travel on a paper boat starts, and finally, he comes back home, where a bittersweet end is waiting for him

Jörg Müller, brilliant Swiss illustrator, uses this story as a starting point to create this unusual picture book with no words.

The artist wants his drawings to be “read” carefully. Numerous details contained in the drawings show us the way and children result encouraged to wonder about them and to make up their own story, their own tale.

“… a critical view on our opulent society … This picture book has hyper realistic images, with a photograph-quality and a narrative power strong enough to make words needless… Brilliant.” (CLIJ, February 2006).

“… the ability to draw between the lines, with so many details that allow so many readings, and so many stories…” (Pepe García Oliva in BLOC, #0, 2007).

“… The steadfast tin soldier is one of the most famous tales by Andersen. The love story between the tin soldier and the royal ballerina is in children’s collective imagination all over the world. The Swiss illustrator Jörg Müller restart the tale to tell us a story with some shared elements, but quite different. Without the need of words, he turns the tale into a long travel chronicle, a travel starred, without pretending, by a tin soldier and a Barbie, childish toys that a teenager threw away…

As Potato Eaters’ author did, Müller shows his concern about the weak ones by highlighting the contrast between wasteful spending and extreme poverty. Inventions and true facts are woven in his pictures to express the wish for a better world. However, reality comes, and its disillusion. Reality is so unbearable that is better to tell as a story.” (José Luis Polanco in Peonza, # 97).