“You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”~Paul Sweeney
That’s what I felt like when I finished Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter. This book should come with the warning: “This could change your life.”
I, then, gifted a copy to a friend of mine who was complaining about all the bad things happened in her life. She looked at it and said, “It looks like a kid’s book to me.” “It is, I said, but looks like we adults could need it. After she read it , she couldn’t thank me enough.
That’s Pollyanna for you. A medicine sweetened for us all to swallow in one gulp and leaves an everlasting taste long after you finished reading it.
The overview
Pollyanna has had a hard life. Her mother died when she was young, and she has been impoverished all her life. Then her father dies too. Orphaned at the age of eleven, she is sent to live with her aunt, an uptight, humorless woman who looks upon taking Pollyanna under her care as her duty -- and nothing more and hopes that the child won't disrupt her quiet, bland routine too much.
But disrupt she will to her life and to the lives of all the others who are lucky enough to come in touch with her, for Pollyanna’s father has taught her to play a game, a game that can be played by anyone, anytime, anywhere and in any situation, a game that could well become a revolution in this world. It's called the Glad Game, and with it Pollyanna proceeds to turn the entire town upside down.
From the Böök:” You see I'd wanted a doll, and father had written to them so. But when the missionary barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn't any dolls come in, but the little crutches had. So she sent 'em along as they might come in handy for some child, sometime. And that's when we began it. ... the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about -- no matter what 'twas," rejoined Pollyanna earnestly. "And we began right then -- on the crutches."
Her father told her that she could be 'glad' that she didn't 'need' them, and that's when the game of finding a silver lining in every cloud began.
The book, classic in its language, is joyful and refreshing and the message in it is universal. You are left, with the feeling of wanting to find something good in everything in life and can almost feel like you know Pollyanna personally and like the quote says, at the end of the book, you feel a little like you lost a good friend though her message would stay with the reader. A must read for young and old alike.
Vidya.S
