The Wonderful Adventures of Nils a personalised book with your child as the hero

Once upon a time, on a farm in Skåne, at the very southern tip of Sweden, there lived a boy called Nils Holgersson. Nils was not a bad boy, but he would much rather pull the cat's tail or chase the hens round the yard than do anything he was asked.

One Sunday morning his mother and father put on their church clothes. "You stay at home and read your book quietly," said his father, "and we will see how much you have read when we come back." Then they walked off down the lane to church, and Nils was left alone.

He had hardly turned a page when he saw something move. The lid of his mother's old carved chest stood open, and on its edge sat a tomte, a tiny old man no taller than a hand, in a long black coat and a broad black hat. Nils knew at once that it was the tomte who looks after the farm. Quick as a wink he took the butterfly net from the wall and swept it over the little man.

"Let me out!" cried the tomte, very cross indeed. And when Nils only laughed, the tomte said a few short words, and something strange began to happen. The room grew bigger and bigger. The table legs rose up like trees, the chair became a mountain, and the butterfly net lay on the floor as big as a fishing boat. Nils looked down at his hands. He had shrunk, clothes and clogs and all, until he was no bigger than the tomte himself. And the tomte was gone.

Nils ran out into the farmyard to find him. The sparrows on the fence burst out laughing. "Look at Nils Holgersson! Look how small he is!" The hens came clucking round him, and the cat on the doorstep narrowed its eyes, and the cow lowed from the barn, and Nils understood every word. They all had something to say about the tails he had pulled and the eggs he had chased, and none of it was kind.

Just then a great call came down from the sky. A flock of wild geese was flying north in a long V. "Come along! Come along! Up to the mountains!" they called. And Morten, the big white farm gander, stretched out his neck and flapped his wings. "Wait for me!" he honked, and he began to run across the yard.

"Morten, stop!" shouted Nils, and he threw his arms round the gander's neck to hold him back. But Morten did not stop. Up he rose, over the fence, over the thatched roof, with tiny Nils on his back hanging on to his white feathers, and away they went after the wild geese.

From up there Nils looked down, and the whole flat land of Skåne lay spread out below him like a great chequered cloth, with fields in squares of green and brown, and little white churches and farms dotted about like buttons.

That evening the geese came down on the ice of a great lake. The oldest goose of all stepped forward. She was grey and very wise, and her name was Akka of Kebnekaise. She looked Nils up and down. "A human child," she said sternly. "We do not trust humans." But Morten spoke up for his little friend, and Akka let Nils stay with the flock.

That very night Smirre the fox came creeping across the ice and snatched a sleeping goose. Nils woke and ran after him as fast as his tiny legs could go. He caught hold of Smirre's bushy tail and pulled with all his might, until the startled fox dropped the goose and she flew off, free, into the night sky. Then Nils scrambled up a tall beech tree. All night long Smirre circled at the bottom, looking up and licking his lips, but he could not climb. At dawn the geese came flying low over the fox's nose, again and again, until he chased them away into the woods, and Nils climbed down safe. After that, Akka never said a word against him.

So Nils travelled with the wild geese, and he had more adventures than there are days in a month. At the stone castle of Glimminge, an army of grey rats came to drive out the castle's own old black rats. Akka gave Nils a little wooden pipe, and in the moonlight he walked away across the plain playing it, and every grey rat followed the tune out of the castle and far away, and they never came back.

On the hill of Kullaberg, above the sea, Nils watched the great crane dance, the one day of the year when all the animals meet in peace. The hares and the deer and the birds stood in a ring, and the grey cranes leapt and twirled with their wings spread wide, and Nils thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

In the harbour town of Karlskrona, Nils was cheeky to the bronze statue of the old king in the market square. That night the bronze king climbed down from his stone and came clanking after him through the moonlit streets. Nils ran until he came to a painted wooden statue of an old sailor, who lifted his wide hat and set it down on the cobbles, and Nils crept underneath it and kept as still as a mouse until the bronze king had stomped away.

At last the geese reached Lapland, far in the north, where the snow lies on the mountains all summer and the sun never sets at night. By a clear mountain lake the flock made their nests, and Morten found a grey goose called Dunfin to be his wife, and soon there were fluffy goslings paddling round them.

When autumn came, the geese flew south again, and Nils came home with them to the farm in Skåne. His mother and father were standing in the doorway, looking sad, for they had missed their boy all summer. Nils ran into the yard calling, "Mother! Father! I'm home!" And as he ran, he grew. He grew as tall as the hens, as tall as the fence, and taller still, until he was his own size again, standing in the middle of the yard. His mother and father could hardly believe their eyes, and they had never been so happy.

Early the next morning Nils went down to the shore. The wild geese were gathering for their long flight south. He could not understand their talk any more, now that he was a boy again. But old Akka flew down and circled low above him once, and Nils waved and waved. Then the whole flock rose up in a long V and flew away over the sea.

Nils stood on the sand until they were only a speck in the sky. And from that day on, he was always kind to every animal on the farm, because he knew now that each one of them had something to say.