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Thumbelina
Thumbelina (; da, Tommelise) is a literary fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen first published by C. A. Reitzel on 16 December 1835 in Copenhagen, Denmark, with "The Naughty Boy" and "The Travelling Companion" in the second instalment of ''Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection., Fairy Tales Told for Children''. Thumbelina is about a tiny girl and her adventures with marriage-minded toads, moles, and cockchafers. She successfully avoids their intentions before falling in love with a flower-fairy prince just her size. Thumbelina is chiefly Andersen's invention, though he did take inspiration from tales of miniature people such as "Tom Thumb". Thumbelina was published as one of a series of seven fairy tales in 1835 which were not well received by the Danish critics who disliked their informal style and their lack of morals. One critic, however, applauded Thumbelina. The earliest English translation of Thumbelina is dated 1846. The tale has be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consisting of 156 stories across nine volumes and translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. His most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", " The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", " The Red Shoes", " The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", " The Little Match Girl", and " Thumbelina". His stories have inspired ballets, plays, and animated and live-action films. Early life Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark on 2 April 1805. He had a stepsister named Karen. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Thumb
Tom Thumb is a character of English folklore. ''The History of Tom Thumb'' was published in 1621 and was the first fairy tale printed in English. Tom is no bigger than his father's thumb, and his adventures include being swallowed by a cow, tangling with giants, and becoming a favourite of King Arthur. The earliest allusions to Tom occur in various 16th-century works such as Reginald Scot's ''Discovery of Witchcraft'' (1584), where Tom is cited as one of the supernatural folk employed by servant maids to frighten children. Tattershall in Lincolnshire, England, reputedly has the home and grave of Tom Thumb. Aside from his own tales, Tom figures in Henry Fielding's 1730 play ''Tom Thumb'', a companion piece to his ''The Author's Farce''. It was expanded into a single 1731 piece titled '' The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the History of Tom Thumb the Great''. In the mid-18th century, books began to be published specifically for children (some with their authorship attributed to "Tommy Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cockchafers
The cockchafer, colloquially called Maybug, Maybeetle, or doodlebug, is the name given to any of the European beetles of the genus ''Melolontha'', in the family Scarabaeidae. Once abundant throughout Europe and a major pest in the periodical years of "mass flight", it had been nearly eradicated in the middle of the 20th century through the agricultural intensification and has even been locally exterminated in many regions. However, since pest control was increasingly regulated in the 1980s, its numbers have started to grow again. Taxonomy There are three species of European cockchafers: *The common cockchafer, ''Melolontha melolontha'' *The forest cockchafer, ''Melolontha hippocastani'' *The large cockchafer, ''Melolontha pectoralis'', rarer and less widespread than the other two species. Description Adults of the common cockchafer reach sizes of 25–30 mm; the forest cockchafer is a little smaller (20–25 mm). The two species can best be distinguished by the form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Arabian Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition (), which rendered the title as ''The Arabian Nights' Entertainment''. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central and South Asia, and North Africa. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature. Many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work ( fa, هزار افسان, lit. ''A Thousand Tales''), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements. Common to all the editions of the ''Nights'' is the framing device of the story ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swallow
The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae, are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The term "swallow" is used colloquially in Europe as a synonym for the barn swallow. Around 90 species of Hirundinidae are known, divided into 19 genus, genera, with the greatest diversity found in Africa, which is also thought to be where they evolved as hole-nesters. They also occur on a number of oceanic islands. A number of European and North American species are long-distance bird migration, migrants; by contrast, the West and South African swallows are nonmigratory. This family comprises two subfamilies: Pseudochelidoninae (the river martins of the genus ''Pseudochelidon'') and Hirundininae (all other swallows, martins, and saw-wings). In the Old World, the name "martin" tends to be used for the squarer-tailed species, and the name "swal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mole (animal)
Moles are small mammals adapted to a subterranean lifestyle. They have cylindrical bodies, velvety fur, very small, inconspicuous eyes and ears, reduced hindlimbs, and short, powerful forelimbs with large paws adapted for digging. The word “mole” refers to any species in the family Talpidae, which means “mole” in Latin. Moles are found in most parts of North America, Europe and Asia. Moles may be viewed as pests to gardeners, but they provide positive contributions to soil, gardens, and ecosystem, including soil aeration, feeding on slugs and small creatures that eat plant roots, and providing prey for other wildlife. They eat earthworms and other small invertebrates in the soil. Terminology In Middle English, moles were known as ''moldwarp''. The expression "don't make a mountain out of a molehill" (which means "exaggerating problems") was first recorded in Tudor times. By the era of Early Modern English, the mole was also known in English as ''mouldywarp'', a wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odense, Denmark
Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (behind Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2022, the city proper had a population of 180,863 while Odense Municipality had a population of 205,978, making it the fourth largest municipality in Denmark (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg municipalities). Eurostat and OECD have used a definition for the Metropolitan area of Odense (referred to as a ''Functional urban area''), which includes all municipalities in the Province (Danish: ''landsdel'') of Funen (Danish: ''Fyn''), with a total population of 504,066 as of 1 July 2022https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en&fbclid=IwAR2SFTy1xGM8VcLHijhmSDQWd9Fr3TYx7JlKxg81_09e-KzEtmEgjL5L2UU By road, Odense is located north of Svendborg, to the south of Aarhus and to the southwest of Copenhagen. The city was the seat of Odense County until 1970, and Funen County from 1970 until 1 January 2007, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean De La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine (, , ; 8 July 162113 April 1695) was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his ''Fables'', which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages. After a long period of royal suspicion, he was admitted to the French Academy and his reputation in France has never faded since. Evidence of this is found in the many pictures and statues of the writer, later depictions on medals, coins and postage stamps. Life Early years La Fontaine was born at Château-Thierry in France. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, maître des eaux et forêts – a kind of deputy-ranger – of the Duchy of Château-Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. Both sides of his family were of the highest provincial middle class; though they were not noble, his father was fairly wealthy. Jean, the eldest child, was educa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Fontaine's Fables
Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered classics of French literature. Humorous, nuanced and ironical, they were originally aimed at adults but then entered the educational system and were required learning for school children. Composition history Divided into 12 books, there are 239 of the ''Fables'', varying in length from a few lines to some hundred, those written later being as a rule longer than those written earlier. The first collection of ''Fables Choisies'' had appeared March 31, 1668, dividing 124 fables into six books over its two volumes. They were dedicated to ''"Monseigneur"'' Louis, ''le Grand Dauphin'', the six-year-old son of Louis XIV of France and his queen consort Maria Theresa of Spain. By this time, La Fontaine was 47 and known to readers chiefly as the aut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stag Beetle
Stag beetles are a family of about 1,200 species of beetles in the family Lucanidae, currently classified in four subfamilies.Smith, A.B.T. (2006). A review of the family-group names for the superfamily Scarabaeoidea (Coleoptera) with corrections to nomenclature and a current classification. The Coleopterists Bulletin 60:144–204. Some species grow to over , but most to about . Overview The English name is derived from the large and distinctive mandibles found on the males of most species, which resemble the antlers of stags. A well-known species in much of Europe is ''Lucanus cervus'', referred to in some European countries (including the United Kingdom) as ''the'' stag beetle; it is the largest terrestrial insect in Europe. Pliny the Elder noted that Nigidius called the beetle ''lucanus'' after the Italian region of Lucania where they were used as amulets. The scientific name of ''Lucanus cervus'' adds ''cervus'', deer. Male stag beetles are known for their oversize mandi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slagelse
Slagelse () is a town on Zealand, Denmark. The town is the seat of Slagelse Municipality, and is the biggest town of the municipality. It is located 15 km east of Korsør, 16 km north-east of Skælskør, 33 km south-east of Kalundborg and 14 km west of Sorø. History Slagelse has been inhabited since at least the Viking Age, where it was a Pagan site. Trelleborg, a ring castle, was built near the current location of Slagelse in 980, which made the location strategically important. A church was built at Slagelse's current location in the 1000s. Around this time, coins were minted in Slagelse. Antvorskov was built in the 1100s by Valdemar I, who had recently acquired Zealand. He built the monastery in an attempt to gain control and favor with the locals. The monastery was used by the Knights Hospitaller. Slagelse was granted the status of a market town in 1288 by Eric V. This gave the town a series of privileges, though eventually put it in competition with the neighboring ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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