{"product_id":"the-queen-the-princes-and-the-mermaid-isbn-9781782692942","title":"The Queen, the Princes and the Mermaid","description":"\u003cb\u003eA collection of Andersen's most magical fairytales\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA girl journeys across unknown lands to rescue her friend from the clutches of The Snow Queen, who has imprisoned his heart in ice. A sister struggles to break the spell that has turned her ten princely brothers into swans. A mermaid decides to leave her underwater world behind for love. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese renowned fairy tales, brimming with imaginative richness, are some of the most magical and inspiring ever written.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContains: 'The Snow Queen', 'The Wild Swans', 'The Nightingale', 'The Little Mermaid', 'The True-Hearted Tin Soldier'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, a selection of which is included in this book.Listen closely! We’re about to begin. And\u003cbr\u003e when we reach the end of the tale, let’s hope we know\u003cbr\u003e more than we do now, for it concerns an evil goblin, one\u003cbr\u003e of the very worst – the Devil himself! One day, the Devil\u003cbr\u003e was feeling mighty pleased with himself because he’d\u003cbr\u003e made a special mirror. The mirror took anything that\u003cbr\u003e was good or lovely and shrank it to almost nothing. But\u003cbr\u003e if something was useless or bad, the mirror magnified\u003cbr\u003e it and made it look even worse. The most charming\u003cbr\u003e landscape looked like boiled spinach in the mirror,\u003cbr\u003e while the nicest people turned nasty or stood on their\u003cbr\u003e heads with their middles missing, and their faces so\u003cbr\u003e twisted that nobody knew who they were. And if you\u003cbr\u003e had a freckle, you could be sure that the mirror would\u003cbr\u003e stretch it across your entire mouth and nose. “What a\u003cbr\u003e hoot!” cried the Devil. If someone had a kind thought,\u003cbr\u003e then a sneer would appear in the mirror, which made\u003cbr\u003e the old goblin laugh at his own cunning. The goblins\u003cbr\u003e who went to goblin school – for you see, the Devil ran\u003cbr\u003e a goblin school – all chattered about the miracle. They\u003cbr\u003e thought that now they could see what humans and the\u003cbr\u003e world \u003ci\u003ereally \u003c\/i\u003elooked like. They ran everywhere with the\u003cbr\u003e mirror and, in the end, there was not one person or\u003cbr\u003e country that it didn’t twist out of shape.\u003cbr\u003e Then the goblins decided to fly up to Heaven, to mock\u003cbr\u003e the angels and God himself. The higher they flew with the\u003cbr\u003e mirror, the harder it laughed, and they could barely hold\u003cbr\u003e onto it. Higher and higher they flew, nearer and nearer\u003cbr\u003e to God and the angels – and then the mirror shook so\u003cbr\u003e hard with laughter that it slipped from their hands and\u003cbr\u003e tumbled down to earth, where it shattered into millions\u003cbr\u003e and billions of pieces.\u003cbr\u003e That created more trouble than ever. Some pieces\u003cbr\u003e were hardly bigger than a grain of sand, and they flew\u003cbr\u003e all around the wide world – and whenever a piece got in\u003cbr\u003e someone’s eye, it stuck fast. Then the person could only\u003cbr\u003e see what was wrong with everything, because each of\u003cbr\u003e these tiny bits had the same power as the whole mirror.\u003cbr\u003e Some people also got a sliver of mirror in their hearts –\u003cbr\u003e and that was truly terrible, because it turned their hearts\u003cbr\u003e into lumps of ice. Sometimes a piece was large enough to\u003cbr\u003e use as a windowpane; but it was no good looking at your\u003cbr\u003e friends through a window like that. Other pieces ended\u003cbr\u003e up in eyeglasses – and then it was awful when people put\u003cbr\u003e them on in order to see and do things properly.\u003cbr\u003e It all tickled the Devil so much that he roared with\u003cbr\u003e laughter and his belly nearly split. All the while, more\u003cbr\u003e and more tiny shards of glass were flying about in the air.\u003cbr\u003e And now we’ll hear what happened next!","brand":"Pushkin Children's Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303472877797,"sku":"NP9781782692942","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782692942.jpg?v=1767741127","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-queen-the-princes-and-the-mermaid-isbn-9781782692942","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}