Hans Christian Andersen tales

Andersen was born in Odense in 1805, the son of a shoemaker, and died in 1875. Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who collected what other people told, Andersen wrote his own. His first small booklet of fairy tales appeared in 1835 and he kept producing them for most of the next forty years.

That difference shows in the stories. They have an author's interest in one particular character's feelings, and they are willing to end unhappily, which folk tales usually are not. Our guide to Andersen’s life and stories goes through the biography and the best known tales.

Four is a small collection, so an order is more useful than a description.

Start with the funny one

The Emperor’s New Clothes is three minutes, ages 4–8, and the only Andersen tale on the site marked funny. A child understands the joke immediately and remembers it for life, which makes it the best introduction to his work.

Then the two about being yourself

The Ugly Duckling takes seven minutes for ages 3–7 and is the one children ask for again. The Princess and the Pea is six gentle minutes and is much lighter than it looks, essentially a joke about how thoroughly someone can be tested.

Leave this one until last

The Little Match Girl is six minutes and is genuinely sad. Read it when your child is older, not last thing at night, and not on a difficult evening.

The versions on this site are adaptations rather than translations. The vocabulary and sentence length are pitched at the listed age range, and The Little Match Girl in particular is handled with more comfort than Andersen's 1845 original. Everything else about the tales, including what actually happens, is his.

Whether to soften further while reading is a judgement about your own child. A sad ending that is talked about afterwards is usually fine; a sad ending at lights-out with no conversation is what causes the 11pm visit. If you want the story without the sadness tonight, The Wild Swans, a nine-minute Andersen adaptation for ages 6–10 in brothers and sisters stories, carries the same feeling but ends well.

For the German side of the same shelf, Brothers Grimm tales holds seven more, and classic stories gathers the best known tales on the site in one place.