The Little Mermaid

by Hans Christian Andersen, Misha Hoekstra (Translator), Helen Crawford-White (Illustrator)

Overview

Discover the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that inspired the classic Disney movie!

This stunningly romantic interpretation features whimsical illustrations that will delight adults and young readers, 7-10.

Six young sisters live in the depths of the ocean, longing for the chance to see the beauty of the earth. Most eager of all is the youngest mermaid, who counts the days to her 15th birthday when her grandmother will finally allow her to rise to the surface.

Her first sight above the water is a large ship on which a beautiful prince is celebrating his 16th birthday. Immediately she falls in love, and so begins her determined quest to join the prince on earth as a human.

Full of wonder and heart, The Little Mermaid remains one of the most powerful fairy tales ever written, and this gorgeously illustrated translation gives it renewed life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782692508
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker. The king helped to pay for his education, enabling him to become a short-story writer, novelist and playwright. He remains best known for his fairy tales, which include The Red Shoes, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling. Pushkin Children's also publishes The Snow Queen and The Wild Swans.

Helen Crawford-White lives and works by the sea. She designs covers, illustrates books and creates websites.

Date of Birth:

April 2, 1805

Date of Death:

August 4, 1875

Place of Birth:

Odense, Denmark

Place of Death:

Copenhagen, Denmark

Read an Excerpt

Far out at sea, the water is as blue as cornflower
petals and as clear as the purest glass. Yet it’s very deep—
deeper than the reach of any anchor rope. You’d have to
stack a lot of steeples on top of each other to reach from
the bottom to the surface. And down at the bottom is
where the sea folk live.
Now, you mustn’t think that the sea floor is only bare
white sand—no, because the most marvellous trees and
plants grow there. Their leaves and stems are so flexible,
the smallest movement of water makes them sway as if
they were dancing. All the fish, big and small, flit through
their branches, just like birds in the air up here. In the
deepest spot of all stands the palace of the Sea King. Its
walls are coral and its high pointed windows the clearest
amber, while the roof is made of clamshells that open
and close with the current. It looks magnificent, because
in each shell there are glistening pearls, and any one of
them would be the pride of a queen’s crown.
The Sea King had been widowed for many years,
and his old mother ran the royal household. She was a
wise mermaid, though proud of her high rank; so she
paraded about with twelve oysters on her tail, while the
other mermaids at court could only have six. But she was
admirable in all other things, especially her affection for
the young sea princesses—her granddaughters. There were
six of these lovely princesses, but the youngest was the
most beautiful of all. Her skin glowed like a rose petal and
her eyes were as blue as the deepest sea. And just like her
sisters, she had no feet, for her body ended in a fish’s tail.
All day long they played in the great palace halls, where
living flowers grew from the walls. When they threw open
the tall amber windows, the fish would swim inside, just
as swallows fly through our windows when we open them.
But these fish swam right over to the little princesses, ate
from their hands and let themselves be petted.
Outside the palace lay a large garden with trees that
were fiery red and navy blue. The fruit shone like gold
and the flowers looked like burning flames, their stems
and leaves forever flickering. The ground was the finest
sand, but it was the blue colour of sulphur when it burns.
Everything was bathed in a wonderful azure glow, so that
you might imagine you were high in the air, gazing only
at the sky above and below you, rather than at the ocean
floor. When the sea was calm, you could glimpse the
crimson flower that all the light seemed to be streaming
from—the sun.

Table of Contents

Daughters Of Triton

Fathoms Below

Kiss The Girl

Les Poissons

Part Of Your World

Part Of Your World (Reprise)

Poor Unfortunate Souls

Under The Sea

Editorial Reviews

ger for reading aloud. This fine translation of Andersen's fairy tale first appeared in "Michael Hague's Favorite Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales" (1981). Hague's picture-book version is a colorful collection of undersea life--glittering fish, sparkling ocean flora, and merpeople with pearly tails float from page to page as the Little Mermaid pursues her impossible love. That the pictures do not always accurately reflect the text and that the faces of the characters are less graceful than their forms will go unnoticed by young readers captured by the romance of the subject at hand. The Little Mermaid's ultimate tragedy is foreshadowed by dark stormy seas and Andersen's own telling language. Parents may have to be warned that this is the antithesis of Disney, with a sad, if foregone, conclusion.

Janice Del Negro

"Denmark's greatest writer" - Independent

From the Publisher

2020-06-03
New illustrations accompany a 19th-century translation of Andersen’s text.

The decision to reprint Paull’s full 1872 English translation of Andersen’s story in picture-book form will likely alienate many readers. The length of the text, unartfully presented in overwhelming blocks of small, serif type, could intimidate readers, but outdated and objectionable content may present other barriers, exacerbated by illustration choices. Repeated use of the word “dumb,” for instance, to describe the mermaid’s inability to speak when she becomes human is insensitive at best. Before this point in the story, the blond, pink-skinned mermaid saves the drowning prince and leaves him onshore by a palace with architectural features that suggest a generic, exotic East, with arched doorways, onion domes, minarets, etc., and populated by characters in robes, veils, and saris. When the mermaid returns to the palace as a human, she watches “beautiful female slaves, dressed in silk and gold, [who] stepped forward and sang before the prince and his parents [and] performed some pretty fairylike dances to the sound of beautiful music.” Watts does not depict these enslaved people, but the book’s uncritical inclusion of this passage and its ultimate reiteration of the moralistic conclusion of the tale undermine ways the pretty, pastel- and jewel-toned pictures might have served a 21st-century audience.

Leave this one in the deeps. (Picture book/fairy tale. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews