( 15 reviews )
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Posted: Feb 22 2009
Call me an overly-sensitive sap, but I think Pollyanna is a wonderful story. While it may not be "great literature," its optimistic, silver-lining-on-every-cloud message is inspiring, valuable, and timeless. Pollyanna demonstrates the "proactivity" described in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: namely that you have the power and the freedom to choose your response in any given situation. As human beings, we have the ability to choose to not be controlled by our circumstances; happiness is a choice. Granted, constant happiness is not realistic, and Pollyanna experiences challenges that would bring anyone down, and we see her humanity when she loses her ability to see the silver lining. I can see how cynical people would complain about how unrealistic the book is, but it is obviously about an EXCEPTIONAL person, someone we should all strive to emulate; and these exceptional people who can choose, maybe not happiness in every circumstance, but at least to find meaning and a reason and drive to keep living DO EXIST (see the extreme example of Victor Frankl's experience in concentration camps). I pity the kids whose negative reviews tell me that they've lost their childhood innocence. Maybe the ends are too neatly tied in the end and maybe the characters are cliche, but its sweetness and innocence and the overall inspiring message of optimism make Pollyanna worth reading - and aren't those neatly tied happy endings just so satisfying sometimes? And to those who complain of her similarities to Anne Shirley - what's wrong with that? The story IS different; and we can all stand to benefit from reading more positive, life-affirming, soul-nurturing books.
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Posted: Jan 26 2009
Although I appreciate those inspiring folks who believe that the glass is half full, choose to look on the bright side, and see a silver lining in every dark cloud, eleven-year-old Pollyanna takes the concept to an irritatingly higher level. Her businesslike forty-year-old half-namesake aunt Polly who resides in Beldingsville, Vermont, agrees to take on guardianship of the orphaned girl, not out of love but of duty, and relegates her to an uncomfortable, unadorned room. The girl welcomes flies, greets (and eventually befriends) standoffish townspersons, and can think of something good in even the worst situation as a direct result of her adherence to the rules of the "just being glad," game that she learned from her father (p 38) "the game was just to find something about everything to be glad about-no matter what `twas." Those she befriends quickly jump on the pro-Pollyanna bandwagon. She is slow, however, in transforming her aunt (who forbids her to talk of her father thus learns late of the game) from cool to convert. Pollyanna brightens the world of a bedridden woman, brings out the best in a penny-pinching bachelor, rescues the same man, and helps an orphan boy find a family. And when tragedy strikes, she faces the challenge cheerfully. The book ends as one might expect. Although a positive attitude is admirable, Pollyanna's pleasantness was too much for me. This book might qualify as the book with one of the most distracting words of all time with its repeated use of a dual-meaninged (now rarely used in this context) synonym for "exclaim." Better: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and Clarice Bean Don't Look Now by Lauren Child.
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Posted: Jan 19 2009
This is a classic happy/uplifting book. Looking for a pick me up in tough times, read Pollyanna.
