Watch more bedtime stories on our YouTube channel.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who wished dearly for a child. Time passed, but no child came, so she sought help from an old witch.
The witch gave her a magical barley grain, which grew into a beautiful tulip.
When the flower opened, inside sat a tiny girl. She was named Thumbelina, for she was no taller than a thumb.
She was given a walnut shell for a cradle, with rose petals and violets as her pillow and blanket.
The woman gave Thumbelina a bowl of water and a tulip petal to use as a boat.
But one day, a nasty toad crawled in through the window and kidnapped her.
The toad wanted Thumbelina to marry her ugly and dreadful son. She carried her off to a pond and trapped her on a lily pad.
But the little fish in the pond chewed through the stem to free her.
Thumbelina floated down the river until a beautiful white butterfly landed on her leaf.
She tied her sash to the butterfly and began sailing much faster.
But a mean June beetle swooped down and carried her off to his home high up in a tree.
The other beetles came to stare at her. They laughed and said she was hideous because she only had two legs and no antennae.
They left her sitting on a daisy, and she stayed there all alone the whole summer.
When winter came, the birds flew south, and she nearly froze to death, wrapped only in a dry leaf.
Finally, a kind field mouse took her in. The mouse offered her shelter if she would tell stories.
The mouse’s neighbor, a mole in a velvet-black coat, came to visit. He fell in love with Thumbelina.
The mole invited her to his dark tunnels underground, where she discovered a dying swallow.
Thumbelina brought the bird home, kept it warm, and nursed it back to health.
When spring arrived and the swallow regained its strength, it offered to take her on its back.
But Thumbelina didn’t want to upset the field mouse, so she stayed.
She said a sad goodbye to the swallow, and it flew high above the treetops.
The mole wanted to marry Thumbelina, so the mouse hired four spiders to weave her wedding dress.
By autumn, everything was ready. The mouse told Thumbelina that the wedding was to take place soon.
The tiny girl cried—she didn’t want to live underground.
“Goodbye,” she whispered to the sun and the flowers. She thought she’d never see them again, for the mole hated sunlight.
“Tweet-tweet!” came a sound. It was her friend, the swallow! He offered to take her to a warm country for the winter.
She flew on the swallow’s back to a sunny land filled with fruit trees and colorful butterflies.
There, inside a large white flower, she found a tiny man with a golden crown on his head.
He was the flower’s angel.
He was handsome and kind, and he instantly fell in love with Thumbelina. He proposed to her and placed the golden crown on her head.
“You shall be called Maya,” he told her, “for Thumbelina is such a strange name, and you are far too beautiful!”
At the wedding, she was given a pair of silver wings from a fly, so she could fly from flower to flower.
The swallow was sad to say goodbye to the happy couple, for he had grown very fond of Thumbelina. So he flew across the whole world, telling everyone the story of her magical adventure.
