✦ Story Summary ✦
The Ugly Duckling
A fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, 1843. This is a short summary, not the full text. Watch the read-aloud above to hear the whole story.
A mother duck sat on her nest until her eggs hatched, but the last and biggest egg hatched late, and out came a large, gray, awkward duckling. The other ducks and the farmyard animals pecked and teased him and called him ugly, until he was so unhappy that he ran away.
He wandered through marshes and fields, and lived for a while in a cottage with a hen and a cat who thought he was useless because he could neither lay eggs nor purr. One autumn evening he saw a flock of beautiful white birds flying south and felt a strange longing he could not explain. The winter that followed was long, cold, and lonely.
When spring came, he flew to a garden lake where three of the beautiful white swans were swimming. Expecting to be chased away, he bowed his head and saw his reflection in the water. He was no longer an awkward gray duckling. He was a swan. The other swans welcomed him, children called him the most beautiful of all, and he was happier than he had ever dreamed.