Review: Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

3 stars for Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter.

It feels good to be reading a classic children's fiction. I feel as if time has turned back; I am a little girl once again, sitting by myself and enjoying those magical moments created scene after scene from my own imagination as I devour the pages of my hardcover book.

This book is about eleven-year-old Pollyanna Whittier who comes to stay with her strict aunt (mother's sister) in New England. She is a girl who constantly finds things to be glad about. According to Pollyanna, when we are searching for the glad things, we sort of forget the other kind, such as the things we really want, and after a while, it comes naturally, to be glad for things. And mostly, there is always something about everything that we can be glad about, if we keep hunting long enough to find it.

Besides playing the 'just being glad' game, Pollyanna also teaches her aunt (and us, the readers) the meaning of living. To quote "You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living. I mean living - doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading, climbing hills, talking to Mr Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't living!"

Put simply, Pollyanna is a 'being glad for' story. It teaches us to always look on the bright side of things and be glad for things in life. Its positivity is felt throughout the story. It is a book suitable for children of all ages as it teaches the meaning to living and being grateful for things. My only grouse is the wordings applied which I am not used to. To name a few for example, the use of ter instead of to, and yer instead of your, and ye instead of you. To quote "I'm afraid you'll have ter have bread and milk in the kitchen with me. Yer aunt didn't like it - because you didn't come down ter supper, ye know." Though I'm reading Pollyanna, it's hard to be one. Because the wordings do make reading tiresome after a while. But understandably, I let it go due to the age of the book. It is, after all, a 1913 novel.


Publisher: Puffin Classics
Publication date: 1 Mar 2018

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When orphan Pollyanna is sent to live with her bad-tempered aunt, she realizes that many of the folk in Beldingsville could use her help.

As she brings cheer and hope to the people around her, and reminds them that every cloud has a silver lining, she brightens up many lives. But then Pollyana experiences something so terrible that she wonders if she'll ever feel glad again...

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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