Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer whose music is among the most popular of its period. Tchaikovsky was thirty-one years old when he wrote a one-act fairy-tale dance piece. He wrote it for the children of his sister, Alexandra Davydova, and named it Swan Lake. Four years later, he received a commission from the Moscow Theater to make a ballet of the same title.

Lisbeth Zwerger has been accorded nearly every prize that can be given, including the highest international award for lifetime achievement, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Since 1981 she has devoted her extraordinary talents to children’s literature, to stories as charming and picturesque as her native Vienna. Always surprising, always engaging, her artwork combines technical mastery with an insight and gentleness so rare and captivating that she has been correctly called one of the finest illustrators of the twentieth century.