Thumbelina a personalised book with your child as the hero

Once upon a time there was a woman who longed with all her heart for a little child of her own. So she went to a wise old woman and asked what she should do.

"Take this barley grain," said the wise old woman. "Plant it in a flowerpot, and you will see what you will see."

The woman planted the grain, and at once a big, beautiful flower grew up, just like a tulip, with its red petals closed tight. "What a lovely flower," said the woman, and she bent close and kissed it. With a soft pop the flower opened, and there, on its green heart, sat a tiny girl, no bigger than a thumb. So the woman called her Thumbelina.

Thumbelina slept in a polished walnut shell, with violet petals for a mattress and a rose petal for a blanket. By day she played on the kitchen table, where a plate of water stood with a ring of flowers round its edge. She sat in a tulip petal and rowed from one side to the other with two white horsehairs for oars, and she sang so sweetly that the woman stopped her work to listen.

One night a big wet toad hopped in through a broken window pane. "What a pretty little thing," she croaked. "She would do nicely for my son." She picked up the walnut shell, with Thumbelina asleep inside, and hopped away to the wide brown stream where she lived with her son in the mud.

"Koax, koax, brekke-ke-kex!" was all the son could say.

"Hush, or she will run away," said the old toad. "We'll put her on a water-lily leaf. To someone so small, it will be like an island."

When Thumbelina woke and saw water all around her, she began to cry. But the little fishes had heard everything. They poked their heads up to look at her, and they decided she should not stay with the toads. So they nibbled through the green stalk that held the leaf, and away it floated, far down the stream, where the toads could never reach her.

A white butterfly fluttered round her and settled on the leaf. Thumbelina tied one end of her sash to the butterfly and held the other, and the leaf sailed along faster than ever, with the sun shining on the water like gold.

Then a big beetle came flying by. He liked the look of her, and he flew her up into a tall tree. But the other beetles came to stare, and the lady beetles turned up their feelers. "She has only two legs," they said, "and no feelers at all. How plain she is!" So the beetle set her down on a daisy and left her there.

All summer Thumbelina lived alone in the great wood. She wove a bed of grass and hung it under a dock leaf, sipped nectar from the flowers and drank the morning dew. But then came the long, cold winter. The flowers withered, and the snow began to fall, and every snowflake was as big as she was.

At the edge of the wood lay a cornfield cut down to stubble, and under the stubble Thumbelina found a little door. It belonged to an old field mouse, with a warm burrow full of grain. Thumbelina begged for a single grain of barley.

"You poor little thing," said the field mouse. "Come in where it's warm. You may stay all winter, if you keep my rooms tidy and tell me stories."

One day the field mouse said, "We shall have a visitor. My neighbour, the mole. He is very rich and wears a fine black velvet coat." The mole came, but he could not see, and he did not care for the sun or the flowers. Thumbelina sang for him, and the field mouse beamed with pride.

The mole had dug a long tunnel between their houses, and in it lay a swallow, cold and still, with his wings folded tight. That night Thumbelina could not sleep. She wove a soft blanket of hay, crept into the tunnel and laid it over the swallow. Then, leaning close, she heard it: thump, thump. His heart was beating. He was not dead at all, only frozen with cold.

All winter Thumbelina cared for him in secret. When spring came, the swallow was strong again. "Sit on my back," he said, "and I'll fly you away to the green wood." But Thumbelina did not want to make the old field mouse sad, so she said no, and the swallow flew off into the sunshine.

That summer the field mouse made a plan. "You shall go and live with the mole," she said, "deep down under the ground, for ever." She even hired four spiders to spin and weave, so that everything would be ready for moving in the autumn.

But Thumbelina did not want to live where she would never see the sun again. On the last day she stepped out into the golden field to say goodbye. "Farewell, bright sun," she said, and put her arms round a little red flower. "Give my love to the swallow, if you ever see him."

"Tweet, tweet!" came a voice above her. It was the swallow, swooping down over the stubble. "I am flying away to the warm countries," he said. "Will you come with me now?"

"Yes," said Thumbelina. She climbed onto his back and tied her sash to one of his strongest feathers, and up he flew, over forests and the sea, over mountains white with snow, until they reached the warm countries where the air smells of flowers.

By a blue lake stood white marble pillars, where the swallow had his nest, and below them grew big white flowers. The swallow set Thumbelina down on one of them, and what a surprise! In the middle of the flower stood a tiny man, no bigger than she was, with a gold crown and bright wings. He was the king of the flower spirits, for in every flower there lived a little spirit like him.

"Welcome," he said, and bowed. "You have come a long way. Will you stay with us and be our friend?"

"Oh, yes," said Thumbelina. All the flower spirits came out of their flowers, laughing and clapping, and each one brought her a gift. The best gift of all was a pair of shimmering white wings. The king held them out, and they settled on her shoulders all by themselves. Now Thumbelina could fly from flower to flower, and she had a home among the flower people at last.

The swallow sang them his very best song. Then he flew back north, to the land where Thumbelina was born, and sang the whole story to a man who writes fairy tales. And that is how we know it today.