Series: The True Story of Animated Films - 14th installment. Thumbelina.

        ^{The animated film Thumbelina dates from 1994, was taken to the big screen by the production company 20th Century Fox, at that time made of classic children's animation stories. Many people will not remember this story because it was not very commercial, but for many others, it is part of our childhood memories because of its songs and because it is a beautiful fairy tale.}

        ^{If you are less than 20 years old I am pleased to introduce you to Tom Thumbelina, she is not a Disney princess at all, but she is a very charismatic and special character in the literary work of Hans Christian Andersen, the same author of The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen (the book on which Frozen is based). Reading Andersen at this time could be controversial because the stories of his time tried to excite girls to marry, and they could be considered chauvinistic.}

        ^{As always my intention is to honor the authors behind the animations, so I'm going to a personal account of the original story of Thumbelina.}

        ^{A single woman who had not married but wanted to have a child with all her heart, to fulfill her dream, asks for a miracle from a fairy, who in return gives her a seed that she must plant in her home. The woman does her own thing and sows the seed in a flowerpot next to her window illuminated by the moonlight, the next morning a flower was born and a very little girl came out of it and named Thumbelina.}

        ^{He made a bed for her with half a walnut shell and covered her with a rose petal and spent the day sailing in a boat made of the other half of the walnut shell in a bowl of water. One night a toad came into the house, finding her so beautiful, he decided to kidnap her and take her away, still asleep inside the nut, to marry her son.}

        ^{She made a bed for her with half a walnut shell and covered her with a rose petal and spent the day sailing in a boat made of the other half of the walnut shell in a bowl of water. One night a toad came into the house, finding her so beautiful, he decided to kidnap her and take her away, still asleep inside the nut, to marry her son.}

      ^{When Thumbelina woke up, she finds herself in a swamp surrounded by water lilies and next to two toads, the youngest one tells her that he is ready for marriage, she is bewildered and tries to escape but the toad leaves her inside a water lily that floats alone in the water. She spent so much time there that she befriended the fish and told them that they had kidnapped her and she did not want to be there. To help her, the fish began to bite the flower stalk, which slid over the surface of the water, reached the shore and the young woman managed to escape.}

        ^{She didn't know how to get home so she walked aimlessly asking any creature who saw the way home, asked a bumble bee this question and he offered to carry it on his wings, but instead he took it to a very tall tree where he lived with his family and introduced it to everyone as his future wife, everyone laughed out loud and made fun of him for finding such an ugly wife. The embarrassed bumble bee took Thumbelina and left her on the grass, where she spent the whole autumn feeding on flower petals alone.}

        ^{The rat advises Thumbelina to be very creative because her friend the mole likes funny stories. The Mole has dug a tunnel to the rat's house to visit her during the winter so he can see his fiancée, he says he had some trouble getting there because there is a dead swallow in the middle of the tunnel. Thumbelina who is good-hearted that night went to see the swallow, discovers that she is wounded, but not dead, feeds her and takes care of her until spring, when the swallow recovers and can take flight, she tells Thumbelina that she will never forget what she did for her and that she will soon return.}

        ^{While the mole is preparing a big wedding in a field of flowers, but one day before the ceremony Thumbelina tells the mole that she wants to see the sun for the last time before leaving forever underground, the mole pleases her and the Young sale to the surface with intentions never to return, very fast climbs a tree and climbs to the highest branches. Suddenly she heard a voice that shouted his name with a lot of fuss, it was the swallow that came flying with a large group of birds, it climbs on its wings and the joints flew very high leaving everything behind.}

        ^{They arrive at a beautiful forest where the fairies live and meet a prince with beautiful wings that shone in various colors in the sunlight, they both fall in love and get married. Now her world makes sense not as a little girl, but as a fairy without wings, the fairies called her May and made her feel at home.}