Hans Christian Andersen Application on iPad

Okay, so this new iPad application is getting a little press.

From This Fairy Tale App Truly Makes The iPad Feel Magical:

We chuckle when Apple calls the iPad magical, but there are a handful of apps that really make it feel that way. This is one of them.

The Little Mermaid app contains three of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and, as you can see by the video, it's a joy to flip through. Like the Alice iPad app, this one will make a lot of children—and grown up fairy tale lovers—giggle all day long.

No pricing information is available for the app yet, but we know that it'll be released on June 25 and contain The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Happy Family.

And from Fairy Tale iPad App Is Pure Magic:

Imagine a picture book in which rain drops trickle from the page, steam rises from a plate of "hot cross buns," and animals scurry across the text.

A new iPad app launching June 25 brings Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales to life with an interactive, illustrated ebook that offers a high-tech reinvention of our favorite childhood tales.

As I watched the trailer embedded below, I thought, "Pop-up books! In digital form!" Do watch it even if you are skeptical. It's much better than I expected.  And, no, not the same as pop-up books but about as close as I've seen so far. 



Most of the illustrations used in the application are by Vilhelm Pedersen and Lorenz Frolich, the first illustrators of Andersen's tales. Those were pen and ink work and have been colorized for this application.

I don't have an iPad but it appears tablet technology will be here for a while to come so these developments are quite interesting.

And, if you prefer paper and ink, my favorite book of Andersen's tales with these illustrations is The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen: A New Translation from the Danish translated by Diana Crone Frank and Jeffrey Frank.  It's not a comprehensive collection but gets the big hitters with some helpful annotations and histories of the tales.

There is also The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (The Annotated Books) by Maria Tatar.  They are the most useful Andersen collections on my shelves.