This is the whole tale, the same ten pages it runs in Pillowbook on the phone. Read it here tonight if that is easier. Nothing is cut, nothing asks you to sign up, and every picture was painted for this book.
Reading time is about five minutes at an unhurried pace, one page every thirty seconds or so. He is laughed at and he is lonely. That is the point of the story, and it turns.
The duck had made her nest under a burdock leaf at the bottom of the garden, where the grass came up to her shoulders and nobody bothered her. There were six eggs in it, and one of them was larger than the others and a different sort of white. She sat on all six exactly the same, because that is what you do, and waited.Five came out one bright morning, all yellow, all talking. The sixth kept her sitting three more days. When it opened at last there was a big grey downy thing inside it with dark kind eyes and feet too large for the rest of him. The others looked at him. Their mother looked at him rather longer, and then said that he was hers, and took them all down to the water.He swam beautifully. That was the first thing anybody noticed and the last thing anybody mentioned. In the farmyard they said he was a great deal too big, and stood too tall in the water, and had a neck on him like a length of rope. The fat tabby cat said nothing at all, but managed to say it in a way you could hear right across the yard.So he took to eating at the far end of the trough and sleeping at the end of the row. It was not that anyone was unkind for very long at a time. It was that every single day somebody said something, and the days went on adding up. One evening in September he walked to the low place in the fence and got over it and did not come back.The marsh was better. Wild geese went over him twice a day in long wavering lines, calling to each other about somewhere else. He learned which reeds were good to sleep in and how to be perfectly still. He stayed there a month, and nobody at all told him what he looked like, and he found he did not mind the quiet as much as he had expected.Then one afternoon a great flock came down the sky, white, with long necks held out straight in front of them, and they made a sound he had never heard and could not stop listening to. He did not know what they were. He did not know the word. He turned right round in the water watching them go, and something in his chest hurt for the rest of the day.After that came the winter, and it was long. Snow came down on the reed bank without a sound and stayed. He swam in slow circles at night to keep one patch of water from closing over, because when it closed there would be nowhere to be. He got thin. He slept a great deal. He did not have any particular plans.Late on he was found by a farmer and carried indoors in a coat, and put down by a stove among children and pots and a great deal of noise. It was warm. It was much too warm. He went into the milk pan, and then into the flour, and then out through the door somebody had left open, and lay down in the snow feeling better.One morning the sun came up warm and he found he could lift his wings much further than before. He got up out of the reeds, high, without meaning to. Below him on bright water were three of the great white birds. He came down towards them thinking they would send him off, and put his head down low, and looked into the water while he waited.The face in the water was theirs. Long neck, white all over, dark kind eyes. He was still working this out when they came round him, and one of them laid its neck along his neck. Some children came to the bank with bread and said the new one was the finest of the lot. He put his head under his wing. He had never once expected anything like this.
The end.
Read any of the 12 tonight, free
12 classic fairy tales, ten painted pages each, one story an evening. No sign-up before you can read.
Yes. All ten pages of The Ugly Duckling are on this page, each with the illustration that belongs to it. Nothing is held back for the app.
Is it suitable for a three year old?
It is written for children between three and eight. He is laughed at and he is lonely. That is the point of the story, and it turns.
How long does it take to read aloud?
About five minutes at an unhurried pace, which is roughly one page every thirty seconds.
Where do the pictures come from?
They were painted for Pillowbook, one plate per page, in a single visual voice shared across all 12 tales. They are not stock illustrations.
Can I read the other tales here?
Yes. All 12 are on this site in full, free and without an account. The app is for reading them at bedtime — offline, no advertising, one page to a screen — and for the tale it writes about your own child.
