Thumbelina

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through the tunnels he’d built. Thumbelina reluctantly did, but only to make the field mouse, who had been so kind to her, happy. She cried out in joy and clapped her hands as the butterfly flew off into the rising sun. Thumbelina yawned and fell asleep once more Below the lily the fishes heard her and popped up their heads to look at her. ‘What a pretty little girl,’ they said to each other. ‘We cannot let her marry an ugly creature like that.’ So they swam up to the stalk that held the leaf and gnawed away at it until at last the lily floated free.

Dawley, Herbert M. (1924-09-27), Thumbelina (Animation, Short), Herbert M. Dawley Production , retrieved 2023-03-08 her old age. The witch, feeling sorry for the old woman, gave her a special seed for free. The witch told her to plant the seed in her best soil, to water her seed with her clearest water, and On she sailed past several towns, and the little birds sitting in the bushes saw her, and sang, "What a pretty little girl!" The leaf floated farther and farther away; thus Thumbelina left her native land. A great chaffinch came flying past. He caught sight of Thumbelina, and in a moment had put his arms around her slender waist, and had flown off with her to a tree. The green leaf floated away down the stream, and the butterfly with it, for he was fastened to the leaf and could not get loose from it. Oh, dear! How terrified poor little Thumbelina was when the chaffinch flew off with her to the tree! But she was especially distressed on the beautiful white butterfly’s account, as she had tied him fast, so that if he could not get away he must starve to death. But the chaffinch did not trouble himself about that; he sat down with her on a large green leaf, gave her the honey out of the flowers to eat, and told her that she was very pretty, although she wasn’t in the least like a chaffinch. Later on, all the other chaffinches who lived in the same tree came to pay calls. They examined Thumbelina closely, and remarked, "How very miserable!" On March 30, 1994, Warner Brothers released the animated film Thumbelina (1994), [12] directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, with Jodi Benson as the voice of Thumbelina.

There is a bird in the passage,’ he told them. ‘But don’t be afraid, for it is dead.’ When they reached the place where the bird lay, the mole thrust his nose up through the ceiling to let in the daylight. Thank you," said the woman, and she gave the fairy twelve shillings, which was the price of the barleycorn. Then she went home and planted it, and immediately there grew up a large handsome flower, something like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed as if it were still a bud. At the end of winter, the mouse suggests Thumbelina marry the mole, but Thumbelina finds the prospect of being married to such a creature repulsive because he spends all his days underground and never sees the sun or sky, even though he is impressive with his knowledge of ancient history and lots of other topics. The field mouse keeps pushing Thumbelina into the marriage, insisting the mole is a good match for her. Eventually Thumbelina sees little choice but to agree, but cannot bear the thought of the mole keeping her underground and never seeing the sun. Farewell, pretty little bird,” said she, “farewell. Thank you for your delightful singing during the summer, when all the trees were green and the warm sun shone upon us.” Then she laid her head on the bird’s breast, but she was alarmed, for it seemed as if something inside the bird went “thump, thump.” It was the bird’s heart; he was not really dead, only benumbed with the cold, and the warmth had restored him to life. In autumn all the swallows fly away into warm countries; but if one happens to linger, the cold seizes it, and it becomes chilled and falls down as if dead. It remains where it fell, and the cold snow covers it. Even though she was small Thumbelina was very curious, and one day she started investigating the magical world around her. Soon she met an evil frog she wanted to marry her for her son. Thumbelina did not want to spend her life next to that frog, so she ran away into the woods. She was kind, and it did not take long before the forest animals started to love her.

Thumbelina did not say anything, but when the other two had passed on she bent down to the bird, brushed aside the feathers from his head, and kissed his closed eyes gently. "Perhaps it was he that sang to me so prettily in the summer," she thought. "How much pleasure he did give me, dear little bird!" An adaptation of the Thumbelina story directed by Barry Mahon was included as an embedded narrative in the 1972 low-budget film Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. [16] The mole now stopped up the hole through which the daylight shone, and showed the ladies home. But at night Thumbelina could not sleep at all; so she got up out of her bed, and plaited a large beautiful carpet of hay, and took it and spread it over the dead bird, and laid some soft cotton-wool which she had found in the field-mouse’s room at the bird’s sides, so that he might lie warm on the cold ground.Frank, Diane Crone; Frank, Jeffrey (2005). The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3693-6. She brought the swallow some water in a flower leaf Don’t talk so loud, or you’ll wake her," said the old toad. "She might escape us even now; she is as light as a feather. We will put her at once on a broad water lily leaf in the stream. That will be quite an island for her; she is so small and light. She can’t run away from us there, whilst we are preparing the guest-chamber under the marsh where she shall live." His life got hard when his father died. His mother had to clean other people’s laundry to provide food, shelter, and clothes for herself and her son. Even though she wanted to send him to a school to study something he wanted to go into a big city and make something out of himself.