Name: The Little Mermaid and Other Tales
ISBN: 9780781807203

Hans Christian Andersen

This collection of fairy stories by one of the genre's most celebrated figures brings together 27 classic tales including The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Matchgirl, The Tinderbox, A Real Princess, The Flying Trunk, Oli Lockeye and Danish Holger.

The Little Mermaid and Other Tales

Taryn

None but dead men ever entered the Mer-King’s palace. 

“One must not mind slight inconveniences when one wishes to look well,” - Grandmother 

Her eyes sought the young prince - he same instant the ship sank to the bottom. At first she was delighted, thinking that the prince must now come to her abode; but she soon remembered that man cannot live in water, and that therefore if the prince ever entered her palace, it would be as a corpse.

The odor from the flowers tells us they are corpses

All the newspapers in the world has she read, and forgotten them again, so clever is she. 

The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father, the sea king; her grandmother and her five elder sisters, each born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the surface and of human beings.