Read with Me: Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

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I love children's literature and I am not ashamed of it😉 Children's books are kind and fun and magical - the best read when you are down and need something to pick you up. Here are some of my favourite children's authors: Roald Dahl, Astrid Lindgren, Enid Blyton.

Well, I'm digressing, back to Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. This is a lovely story of a lovely eleven-year-old girl who goes to live with her auntie after both her parents die. This little girl is a ray of sunshine that changes the lives of everyone she meets. And she meets a lot of people - the whole village where her auntie lives gets to know Pollyanna and starts playing Pollyanna's favourite game of "just being glad" The point of the game is to try and "find something about everything to be glad about - no matter what" - basically try and spot a silver lining in every cloud. Her father, the minister, taught her this game that he, in turn, invented for himself to cope with the feeling of despondency. One day when he was feeling particularly low, he counted the number of "rejoicing texts" in the Bible - "those that begin "Be glad the Lord," or "Rejoice greatly," or Shout for joy"" and there were 800 of them! The minister "said he felt better right away... and said if God took the trouble to tell us 800 times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it - some" And those texts made him think of the game, and he taught it to Pollyanna who taught it to everybody she met.

Let me give you some examples, when Pollyanna came to live with her aunt and was put in a tiny bare room in the attic, she managed to find something to be glad about: there was not even a mirror on the walls and she thought she could be glad she didn't have to look at her freckles😄

And when her aunt's servant Nancy complained to Pollyanna that she didn't like her name "Nancy", Pollyanna told her she could be glad that her name wasn't "Hephzibah"😄 You get the idea:))

It might be difficult to be glad about breaking one's leg or being an invalid spending the days in bed, but nothing is impossible for Pollyanna. Like with learning every new skill, practice makes perfect and the more you play this game the better you become! This innocent game helped the characters of the book find love, happiness, saved a couple from divorce, gave home to an orphan, turned miserable and grumpy people into loving, caring and life-loving ones.

This book is for the ultimate "antiPollyannas" like myself who are never happy with what they have and see doom and gloom in everything.

This book should be prescribed by doctors, like the book's Dr Chilton prescribed Pollyanna as a tonic to his patients.