"In thousands of years they will come on wings of steam, through the air, across the Atlantic! The young inhabitants of America will visit old Europe. They will see the monuments and the disappearing cities."
In this short story from 1853, Andersen gives us a vision of the future, not far from our present. He imagines airplanes flying over the oceans, a tunnel under the Channel and American tourists who want to see all of Europe in eight days.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013.
Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.
