Thumbelina (1994)

The story of Thumbelina was originally a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. It's the story of a thumb- sized girl and her adventures in life and love.

Here is an online version of the story on the Hans Christian Anderson website http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/Thumbelina_e.html

There is also an audio version available here http://storynory.com/2009/04/20/thumbelina/

The movie most popular film version is probably the 1994 cartoon by Don Bluth, I wrote a review on my other blog so instead of copying and pasting because I think this'll be kind of lengthy as it is, I'll just link it if you want to read it here.

There have  been many film adaptations of the story, here are a few I found on YouTube. I haven't seen all of them, but it kind of blows my mind a bit at the number of different versions there are. I mean it's a good fairy tale, don't get me wrong, but doesn't have the same level of popularity or publicity as do some of the other fairy and folk tales out there, so I didn't expect this many variations of the story.

This version is probably most well-known of them all. It was done by Don Bluth who worked on other films like A Troll in Central Park and Anastasia. This was also the version I came to know first, so obviously has a special place in my heart.



Here are some fan sites for the film

http://www.theneitherworld.com/thumbelina/index.htm

http://cbl.orcein.net/thumbelina/

This is one of the Timeless Tales movies. If you've never heard of them they were these films released in the 90's hosted by Olivia Newton John and each one retold a different fairy tale. I would definitely check out the others and share them with the children in your life.



This one is very short, the whole story crammed into 8 minutes or so, so if you are unfamiliar with the story of Thumbelina, here it is in a condensed version. This is from a series of shorts called World's Greatest Fairy Tales.



Here's a version done by Faerie Tale Theater



Some anime version called Thumbelina: A Magical Story



A Golden books version



There's also a Barbie version apparently, but judging from the trailer I'd assume they take some liberties with the plot



This isn't actually the story of Thumbelina, but is from the movie about Hans Christian Anderson and it's kind of funny. Not that it's meant to be of course... but if you take the scene out of context as I guess I am here, he looks like a mad man.