All boys and girls like good stories. I am sure that all children who read The Ugly Duckling will be glad to know something about the 'King of Story Tellers', who wrote it for them. Thousands and thousands of children have read this story, only to ask for it again and again. It has travelled the wide world over, and has been told in every country. Hans Christian Andersen, the author of "The Ugly Duckling," was born in Denmark. If you look on a map, you will see this little country in northern Europe. There, in the little village of Odense, he spent his boyhood. His father and mother were very poor. The family lived in two little rooms near the top of a house, where his father worked as a shoemaker. On the roof was a box filled with earth. In this box his mother planted her vegetables. Little Hans loved to walk with his father in the woods, where he could pick wild flowers and hear the birds sing. His father read to him when his work was done, or told him stories. What his father did helped him open up a new world. Once, when Hans was still a child, he went into a wheat field with his mother and a number of children, to pick the rest wheat which the reapers  had left in the field. While they were busy picking only a small amount of wheat for each of them, an angry bailiff  came rushing into the field, armed with a whip . All ran, as fast as they could, away from the angry man. _ and the sharp stalks  of the wheat plants which had been cut down, cut his feet so that he could not get away. Unafraid, the boy faced the angry man and his upraised whip. "How dare you hit me when you know God sees you?" he cried, looking fearlessly into the face of the angry bailiff. The whip came down, but not on little Hans. The bailiff admired the boy's courage, and praised him for it. He sent him home with gifts, rather than punishments.[:] While Hans was still a boy, his kind father died. Then Hans and his mother were left alone, to care for each other. "What will you do, Hans?" the mother asked "Would you like to become a tailor?" "No, mother," the boy answered; "I will go to Copenhagen and study. One day I shall write books." "But where will the money be found to pay your way?" asked the mother. "I will work, and God will take care of me," Hans replied. So the boy left his native village and walked all the way to Copenhagen, which was very far. What did Hans' father do in the woods when the work was done?
He gathered wild flowers with Hans. He taught Hans to make shoes. He read books or told stories to Hans. He picked remaining wheat with Hans.