Hans Christian Andersen was born in the Danish city of Odense in 1805, and died in 1875 in Copenhagen. He gained world fame with his literary fairy-tales such as "The Little Mermaid," "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling." The tale at hand, "The Wild Swans," was first published in 1838. It has been translated into more than one hundred languages and adapted for a wide range of media including theater, film and musical. Ulrich Renz was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1960. After studying French literature in Paris he graduated from medical school in Lübeck and worked as head of a scientific publishing company. He is now a writer of non-fiction books as well as children's fiction books. www.ulrichrenz.de Marc Robitzky, born in 1973, studied at the Technical School of Art in Hamburg and the Academy of Visual Arts in Frankfurt. He works as a freelance illustrator and communication designer in Aschaffenburg (Germany). www.robitzky.eu