Thumbelina

By Cookie Nassef

For the Parents:

Thumbelina or Little Tiny is a Danish fairy tale by Hans Cristian Andersen first published in 1835 as part of the second volume of Eventyr, fortalte for Børn (Fairy-tales, Told for Children). It was originally known as Tommelise or Tommeliden (Tomme means inch in danish).

For the Children:

Once upon a time, a woman grew a barleycorn in her garden, so beautiful that when she kissed the petals of the bloom, it burst into a flower and a tiny but beautiful girl emerged. The woman named her Thumbelina, as she was no bigger than the woman’s thumb.

The girl’s beauty soon attracted the attention of a frog. She believed Thumbelina would make a good bride for her son, so she kidnapped the girl in the middle of the night, and delivered her to her son.

The son was immediately enchanted by Thumbelina’s beauty, and left her on a lily pad.

However, Thumbelina managed to find help. Fish gnawed away the root of the lily pad, and a butterfly offered to pull her to safety with one of Thumbelina’s ribbons as a harness.

Before she could be freed however, a mayfly grabbed Thumbelina off the lily and took her away, leaving the butterfly to die as he was too fragile to break free of the ribbon.

The mayfly, who was also enchanted by Thumbelina, brought her back to his family, but the female mayflies declared she was ugly, and so they abandoned her as a result.

Starving in the cold of winter, the little girl was then found by a field mouse, who took care of her. Because the mouse believed that she was indebted to him, the girl soon found herself engaged to a mole. The wedding would take place in spring, once the last snow thawed.

Unhappy that she must marry the mole, Thumbelina went to the see the flowers one last time, knowing the mole disliked the beauty of the upper world and would confine her to the ground below. A bird flew by and saw Thumbelina’s distress, so he offered to take her away to a better world.

She agreed and the bird took her far away to a field of flowers, where he told her to choose a flower to claim as her own. Thumbelina found a flower, but discovered another person present, the prince of fairies.

Enchanted by her beauty, he asked to marry her, and the little girl agreed. She was renamed Maia by the prince (as the name Thumbelina is not beautiful enough for a girl like her) and given a pair of wings so she may fly with her new husband.

– The End –

:)