Read Andersens Sproken en vertellingen in Dutchwith every sentence explained

Andersens Sproken en vertellingen by Hans Christian Andersen is a public-domain classic. In Passage you read the full text in Dutch, marked beginner and filed under children and fantasy.

A duckling nobody wants. A tin soldier who never flinches. A princess who can feel a single pea.

This generous Dutch edition gathers sixty of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, from the world-famous to the half-forgotten. A mother duck hatches one chick too big and too grey for the farmyard; a one-legged toy soldier keeps his post among the playthings; a discharged soldier finds a tinderbox that summons dogs with eyes as big as teacups; and an emperor parades through town in clothes that do not exist.

Andersen writes for children and for the grown-ups reading over their shoulders. Storks, old street lamps, darning needles and snowmen all have opinions, and the endings can be funny, sharp or quietly heartbreaking, as in "The Little Match Girl", "The Wild Swans" and "The Nightingale".

Born poor in Odense in 1805, Andersen became one of the most translated authors on earth. His short, clear tales are a perfect way into a new language.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of Dutch and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.