Essay for Week 13:

This week I chose to read the Hans Christian Anderson unit. I chose this one at random so I did not have any idea what the reading unit entailed. I really enjoyed this unit though and I wasn't sure that I was going to. I especially liked the fact that it contained The Little Mermaid. I had only seen the Disney movie and so I was interested to see how this version was different. I did not have any expectations before reading this unit so I was glad that I enjoyed it.

I really liked how all the stories did not have the same type of ending. Some of the stories had happy endings and some of the stories had sad endings and some had a mixture of happy and sad. It would have been a little depressing if all the ending would have ended sadly and boring if they all had happy endings. Overall, I really enjoyed this unit.

My favorite story from the unit was The Little Match-Seller. It was such a beautifully tragic story. The little girl dies in the end but she was so happy at the final seconds of her life. She was no longer feeling pain. It was very sad but I loved the story. My least favorite story would have to be The Brave Tin Soldier. I just could not get interested in it. I really enjoyed all the other stories in this unit though, so this was the only one that I did not enjoy.

Overall, this unit is one of my favorites. I liked how some of the stories were familiar and exactly like I had already known. One of those stories is The Princess and the Pea. The story was exactly as I remembered. I also liked how some of the stories were nothing like I remembered. The Little Mermaid was completely different than I had every heard. I knew some of the differences between this version and the Disney version but I did not know exactly how the story went so it was nice to have a completely different view of it. This was a really good unit in my opinion.

Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid. Source: Wikimedia Commons