Anywhere
I wander,
Anywhere I roam,
Till I'm in the arms of my darling again,
my heart will find no home.
Anywhere I wander,
anywhere I roam.
Hi. It's me, Big Bird,
walking down Sesame Street,
my favorite street.
I just got back home, know.
I was away for a while,
visiting my old friend, Little Bird.
But it felt so good to get back here,
because I missed my home
and my friends and my nest so much.
Luckily, I had my favorite stories with me.
I read them when I got homesick,
and they made me feel a lot
better.
They were the stories of Hans Christian
Andersen.
Hey, who's making that
racket up there?
Oh, hi, Oscar.
Was I making a racket?
Well, you were standing up there,
yacking in my front yard.
Oh, well, I was just telling everybody
about Hans Christian Andersen's
wonderful stories
an d how they always make me
feel better.
I'd ask you who Hans Christian Andersen is,
but I'm afraid you'd tell
me.
Sure, I'll tell you.
I've been reading all about him,
so I know.
He lived a long time ago
in a country called Denmark.
He spent most of his life
writing stories.
You probably know a lot
of them already.
And the stories are full of happiness
and sadness and ex citing stuff.
I think he understood a lot about people.
Even when he was a grown -up,
he knew what makes kids happy.
Who was this guy?
Did he write any good stories
about garbage or slime?
Gee, Oscar, I don't know if he did,
but I'll bet even you would like some
of his stories anyway.
Anyway, he was really somebody
special.
He was a poor shoemaker's son.
They were so poor,
Hans had to work instead of going to
school.
But his father was always telling
him made -up stories.
And pretty soon,
Hans' head was buzzing with stories of his own,
stories about queens and kings,
and good fairies, and evil witches,
and trees that could talk, magic things.
All the stories made him happy
and made everyone around him happy,
too.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Trees can't talk, Big Bird.
And there are no witches or fairies.
So what do you think of that?
Oh, yes, there are, Oscar.
There are, too.
If you can believe in them, they're there.
Well, anyway, one day Hans decided that
he wanted all his stories to be in books
so they would live on after he was
gone.
To do that, he had to make
a long journey all alone.
He went to live in the greatest
city in all Denmark,
the big, bustling city of Copenhagen.