Tweeting the Tales: Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen created some of the most enduring characters and stories ever written. In honor of his birthday, I am now going to trivialize his monumental achievement by retelling his most famous tales as tweets...

TWEETING THE TALES: HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (in 140 characters or less)

The Little Mermaid: Young mermaid gives up everything to be with man she loves. Dies after he marries less fishy-smelling bride.

The Snow Queen: Young girl embarks on epic quest through winter and woods to save annoying boy. Also, cool ice castle.

The Ugly Duckling: Swan suffering from case of mistaken identity learns that it's more important to be pretty than loved.

The Little Matchgirl: Poor girl freezes to death, but it's okay.

The Emperor's New Clothes: Nude emperor; observant child; rich tailors.

Thumbelina: Small girl is propositioned by inappropriate animals.

The Nightingale: Live birds are better than mechanical birds.

The Tinderbox: Dogs with really huge eyes are cool. (And other stuff happens, but really, their eyes are HUGE.)

The Wild Swans: Girl saves 11 brothers by sewing. Yay for Home Ec!

The Steadfast Tin Soldier: Angst-ridden toys have doomed romances.

The Princess and the Pea: Prince considers fussiness to be reasonable litmus test for suitability to wield supreme executive power.

Happy (belated) birthday, Hans!

If you'd like to read these tales in full, as well as others by Andersen, I recommend the beautiful and fascinating Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, edited by Maria Tatar.

Where I Am

Hi. I'm over here at Simon & Schuster Blogfest 2009. Blogging with 39 other YA authors. Check us out!

I'm also over here, doing an interview at Shady Glade.

And I'm always on Twitter. Kind of obsessed with Twitter these days. The other night, I dreamed I was tweeting, and I tweeted the most witty tweet ever tweeted. Naturally, I forgot it by the time I woke up.

Arctic Word of the Day: "Sastrugi" are wind-eroded snow ripples. Not to be confused with "strigoi," which are Romanian vampires.

12 days until ICE!!!

Twitter, Facebook, and Winterized Website

Played online all weekend. Very fun.

Started "tweeting." Am rapidly becoming addicted. If you're on Twitter, you can follow me here.

Also created a Facebook page. Yep, I'm pretty much the last person on the planet to do so. If you're on Facebook, I hope you'll drop by and become a "fan."

And I winterized my website (as well as my blog and MySpace) in honor of the new cover art for ICE. Outside, the forsythia is blooming and robins are hopping about in a cliched spring-like manner, but online, the deep freeze begins!