There's something really beautiful about the way this book tells Andersen's depressing story of intense, painful emotions using extremely simple language for children. There are sentences like "she felt so sad, she thought her heart would break" and "tomorrow I will be foam on the sea. I have lost everything I love." Wow.
I'm definitely not a child anymore, but I still read this book sometimes. It's so lovely and sad, though as a child I didn't see it that way... I just liked how in the pictures the mermaids had different coloured shell-bras, and such.