The Little Mermaid
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A beautifully illustrated new translation of a beloved Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale
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 fifteenth 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 sixteenth 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 new, gorgeously illustrated translation gives it renewed life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This slim volume holds both Andersen's much-read tale of a mermaid who sacrifices her voice for a chance to win the human prince she loves and the story of a "true-hearted" tin soldier with one leg who falls in love with a paper ballerina. Both focus on doomed, unreciprocated love, their characters' sacrifice and loyalty resonating with spiritual meaning. Hoekstra's adept translation captures the author's signature baroque detail: "The fruit shone like gold and the flowers looked like burning flames, their stems and leaves forever flickering." Andersen's vivid imagined world and curlicued spiritual plots overshadow Crawford-White's occasional black-and-white illustrations; their style recalls the detailed images popular in adult coloring books. Ages 7 10.