Most eager of all is the youngest mermaid, who counts the days to her fifteenth birthday when her grandmother will finally allow her to rise to the surface.Her first sight above the water is a large ship on which a beautiful prince is celebrating his sixteenth birthday. Immediately she falls in love, and so begins her determined quest to join the prince on earth as a human.Full of wonder and heart, The Little Mermaid remains one of the most powerful fairy tales ever written, and this new, gorgeously illustrated translation gives it renewed life.