Many, many children love the Snow Queen, and the Little Match Girl. Hans Christian Andersen wrote the stories about them. He wrote many, many other tales too and won even greater fame than he had ever dreamed for himself.
PAPER CUTTING DONE BY HANS ANDERSEN
He travelled much in other lands. Everywhere he went he found children reading his books or listening to his tales. Some men would have felt very important to have so much fame. But Hans Christian Andersen said, “When I see how far my thoughts have flown, I am frightened. I wonder whether I have kept my thoughts pure enough for so many children to read them.”
Little did he dream just how great was his fame. He wrote those fairy tales more than a hundred years ago. And even today no stories are more loved by children all over the world than the stories by that great teller of tales.
But perhaps the children of Denmark hear the most about the man who wrote those tales, for he was born in their country. A few years ago, the children of Denmark celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. At the schools they acted the stories that Andersen wrote. In Copenhagen movie cameras took pictures of the plays acted by the school children. Those pictures are still shown to many children in Denmark.
In the town of Odense still stands the house where Hans Christian Andersen was born. The people of Denmark have built a building beside that old house in which to keep the things which belonged to Andersen. The street in front of that house looks much the same as it looked when the little boy, Hans, played there.
On the shelves in Andersen’s old home are his fairy tales in Danish, in English, in French, in Spanish, and in other languages too. Andersen wrote the stories in the Danish language, of course. But people in other lands wanted their children to read those wonderful tales too. So the stories have been rewritten in nearly every language in the world.
DOLLS DRESSED LIKE THE CHARACTERS IN ANDERSEN’S STORIES