Like all stories, this one begins with once upon a time… a woman wanted a baby very badly, so one day she went to fairy and asked her where she could find a baby. The fairy gave him a grain of barley and told him to put it in a pot with flowers. Immediately a large and beautiful flower sprung up, and in the flower sat a tiny little girl the size of a finger. That’s why they named it Thumbelina. The parents made him a cradle out of a hazelnut shell, the mattress and blanket out of ax and rose petals. It was a pleasure to see and hear her sing. One night, a big and ugly frog jumped out of the window of the room where she was sleeping and stole the shell in which Thumbelina was sleeping, heading with it to the marshy river where her house was, thinking that he would marry her to his frog boy. When she awoke, the little girl began to cry, so the fishes in the water gathered around the water lily where she was sitting and gnawed at it with their teeth, and the leaf floated away on the water. And as she walked like that on the water, a carrion came flying and caught her with its paws and flew with her into a tree. All the goblins started laughing at her for being ugly and having no antennae, so they took her down from the tree and placed her on a flower.

Poor thing, she sat all summer alone in the forest eating the sweetness of the flowers and drinking the dew gathered from the leaves until winter came with big cold flakes and Thumbelina began to tremble. Right at the edge of the forest where he was staying was a large field into which Thumbelina ventured until he reached the door of a field mouse from whom he asked for a piece of a grain of wheat. The mouse welcomed her into his house and introduced the mole neighbor to him with the idea that the girl might marry him. The mole had recently dug a path underground where he invited Thumbelina and the mouse to walk and told them that there was a swallow dead from the cold. Sad, the little girl wove a carpet of hay and covered the swallow, then surrounded it with cotton she had found on the mouse to keep them warm. As it warmed up, the bird’s heart began to beat and she invited Thumbelina to the warm countries.

They flew together over the forests and over the waters, high above the great mountains until they came to a palace of white marble. Thumbelina looked around and saw a little man with a golden crown on his head. The little man was the king of flowers and fell in love with her immediately. The two got married, and Thumbelina became the queen of flowers.