The Water Babies cover art

The Water Babies

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About this listen

Bernard Cribbins reads Charles Kingsley's much-loved tale about a little chimney-sweep who is turned into a water baby. Tom the chimney-sweep has a hard life. He is beaten by his master, the cruel Mr Grimes, and forced to climb up dark flues where he bruises his knees and elbows and gets soot in his eyes. He is always hungry, for there is never enough to eat, and always dirty, as there is nowhere for him to wash. One day, he is so tired from sweeping flues that he comes down the wrong chimney and lands in the bedroom of a beautiful young girl, where he is mistaken for a thief and runs away. He falls asleep near a river - and when he wakes up, the fairies have transformed him into a water-baby. He loves his new life swimming in the stream and having adventures, but he has no one to play with. So he sets off on a journey to the sea, to find the other water babies.

Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths
All stars
Most relevant
Very well read by Bernard Cribbins, he kept the shortened version of the book interesting.

Good book

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Abridged version lost very little of the story, keeping in some lovely lines. A great accompaniment to my journey.

Beautifully read

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In my opinion the story tried to be full of meaning and morals but I think was rather weak. Sorry. The narration was good though.

Good narration, but the story was silly

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It seems the greatest fans of this story are adults who vaguely remember it from their youth. The story does not stand up by itself as frankly it’s not well-written and lacks both depth or description. Neither my primary-school-aged children, nor I could follow Kingsley’s meandering narrative and after an hour we still had no clear idea what a water baby was. Perhaps we needed to research a Victorian world-view before starting?! It was like listening to someone describing a dream with some very strange twists of reality and time. We struggled to finish it, not for us.

Not one for the kids

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