befus's Full Review: Johanna Spyri, Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Helen B. Dole...
I count myself blessed that I grew up in a home filled with books and a love for reading. My parents invested in many children's classics, many of which I read over and over. I can still see one shelf in my mind's eye, filled with beautifully colored covers and titles like Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Little Women, and Just So Stories.
How I ever missed Heidi, Johanna Spyri's classic tale of a young girl growing up in the mountains of Switzerland, I can't imagine. I don't think it ever dawned on me that I had missed it, until not long ago when I saw Heidi on a list of recommended read-alouds for elementary aged children. Always on the lookout for good books to read aloud to my daughter, I thought I would check out a copy of this classic tale and read it so I could decide when it might be appropriate to read it her. I found a very old and obviously many-times-read copy at our little local library, took it home, and started reading that evening.
What a lovely book! What a delight to discover (new to me!) such a beautiful and well-known book after so many years of hearing about it. Having finally read it, I can understand why it has lasted for such a long time and been so beloved by many generations of readers.
The writing itself is quite beauitful. Spyri lived in Switzerland and clearly knew intimately the landscape of the Alps. She describes the mountains so vividly that you feel as though you're there:
"The valley lay far below bathed in the morning sun. In front of her rose a broad snow-field, high against the dark blue sky, while to the left was a huge pile of rocks on either side of which a bare lofty peak, that seemed to pierce the blue, looking frowningly down upon her. The child sat without moving, her eyes taking in the whole scene, and all around was a great stillness, broken only by soft, light puffs of wind that swayed the light bells of the blue flowers, and the shining gold heads of the cistus, and set them nodding merrily on their slender stems." (from chapter 3, "Out With the Goats")
What makes the descriptions all the more lovely, besides the cadence of the prose, is that we're seeing all these things along with Heidi, our young protagonist. She's never seen anything like these glorious mountains, and so she drinks them in utter astonishment. She's a keen observer, and we readers get to join in her attentive delight.
Spyri does a very fine job of creating memorable and believable characters. Heidi is a simple, unaffected young child who trusts in the goodness of the adults around her, whoever they might be (and whether or not they are worthy of her trust). She's an orphan, and the cousin who took her as a very young child soon realizes she has no time for her, especially since she needs to go out to work and make her living. So she takes Heidi high up into the mountains to live with her grandfather, called "Alm-Uncle" by the people of Dorfli, the town around the base of the mountain. The townspeople seem shocked that anyone would leave a child with the reclusive old man who does not seem to have many friends, but Heidi has no fear of him. Her simple winning trust wins him over, and ultimately transforms the old man, pulling him back into life and friendship.
That's the heart of the story really, but it's how those changes unfold in Alm-Uncle and how Heidi works her influence so sweetly and un-selfconsciously that make the book such a gentle, well-told tale. It's not an easy process for an old man to enter back into life after he's made many mistakes, but neither it is an easy thing for a young girl to grow up. Spyri does a great job of shaping the story so that their journeys in such different seasons of their lives are woven together, and we see how their choices affect each other. After a good, long stretch of time on the mountain, during which Heidi comes to care deeply for her grandfather, the shepherd boy Peter (with whom she learns to tend the goats) and Peter's grandmother (who becomes as dear to Heidi as her own grandmother could be), Heidi is abruptly taken away by the cousin. The cousin claims to have her best interests at heart and has gotten a place for her in the city of Frankfurt, as the companion to a crippled little girl named Clara.
So the middle section of the book details Heidi's battles with homesickness in a place where she no longer has the beautiful, fortifying landscape all around her. She misses her mountains dreadfully and often feels like a caged bird. But her loving nature endears her to at least most of the household in Frankfurt, and she makes very good friends with Clara and Clara's father, grandmother, and doctor. Those friendships wind up standing her in good stead when she eventually is able to go back to her beloved home and grandfather.
In the final section, Spyri weaves together the two previous strands: Heidi's home on the mountain and the new friends she's made in the city, who finally come to see her and begin to understand (as the Alps work their healthful magic on them all) why Heidi was so homesick. Almost everyone in the story ends up changed or transformed in some way, from the reclusive grandfather to the lonely doctor to poor invalid Clara and even stubborn Peter.
And I think that's why this book has lasted. More than the lovely descriptions (though I thoroughly enjoyed them and look forward to reading them aloud to my little girl) the well-drawn characters are changed and transformed by love, forgiveness, and trust in God. Modern readers might feel a bit surprised by the strong Christian content in many of the passages. Spyri particularly uses Grandmama (Clara's grandmother in Frankfurt) as a wise voice of guidance for Heidi and the other children in matters of faith and trust. There's one small section where she talks to Peter about his conscience and the tone really slips into what feels like 19th century moralizing. Remember, this book was originally published in 1880! But other than that, the teaching Grandmama provides about prayer and trust in God (particularly learning to trust that God has wider and more loving purposes than we can know, and that is the reason we must sometimes wait patiently for answers to our prayers) is pretty theologically sound and orthodox in tone, more sound in some respects, I think, than the moments of teaching slipped into Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which was published twelve years prior to Heidi.
I still don't know how I missed Heidi as a child, but now that I've found the book, I definitely plan to read it aloud to my six year old sometime in the next year or so. It's lengthy (my edition well over 300 pages) but so beautifully crafted that you won't want to go near an abridgement. I think young children in the 6-10 age range would enjoy it as a read-aloud, and independent readers of least 8 would enjoy it too.
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