ISSN: 2397-9607 Issue 86 ÿ In Issue 86 of the Baba Indaba Children's Stories, Baba Indaba narrates Hans Christian Andersen?s tale about the darning needle who though she was the most important needle in her mistresses sewing box ? until one day she is dropped. Download and read the story to find out just what happened after that. ÿ INCLUDES LINKS TO 8 FREE STORIES TO DOWNLOADS ÿ Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story, on map. HINT - use Google maps. ÿ Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories". ÿ It is believed that folklore and tales are believed to have originated in India and made their way overland along the Silk and Spice routes and through Central Asia before arriving in Europe. Even so, this does not cover all folklore from all four corners of the world. Indeed folklore, legends and myths from Africa, Australia, Polynesia, and some from Asia too, are altogether quite different and seem to have originated on the whole from separate reservoirs of lore, legend and culture.

Once upon a time there was a darning needle who thought it was a sewing needle. It was indeed very fine, so fine that one day it broke, but it was not yet over for the needle, nor its dreams. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.