About the Episode

The Little Mermaid (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a literary fairy tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children. It’s a dark fairy tale, but definitely not as dark as our dear friends the Brothers Grimm!

In this episode, Ellie reads an abridged version of the story so we can learn just how different the Disney version is compared to the original dark tale.

We also chat a bit about the difference we’ve started to notice between the works of the Grimms vs. Hans Christian Andersen, and we touch on Jacqueline Wilson’s books — because they’re also surprisingly dark, but in a completely different way!