Childhood Favorites...Heidi

Childhood favorites. Everyone has a favorite book or author from childhood. A book that touched them or changed them. A book that perhaps initiated their love of reading and put them on the path of libraries and learning.

Childhood Favorites is a monthly series focusing on beloved books from the past. 

Donald Zolan, Quiet Time.

Heidi was a book that I read over and over again. There was something magical about Grandfather and that house in the Alps. I was sad for Heidi when she was sent away to Frankfurt, but I loved Clara and their friendship. When Clara came home to Switzerland with Heidi and learned to walk, I rejoiced with them. And when the story was over, I wondered what happened to Heidi and Peter.


I was visiting some friends one day and I have no idea how old I was. Probably early teens. Those friends had two books, Heidi Grow Up and Heidi's Children written by Charles Tritten who was Johanna Spyri's translator and who wrote the books years after her death, based on notes and unfinished writings she left behind. I borrowed them and then set out to find my own copies.


The stories aren't written in the same style or voice as Heidi, but they tell us that Heidi went away to boarding school and came back and married Peter and they had sweet little twins. My copies are both solid blue, like the picture on the above right. But their covers didn't matter. I adored those two books as much as I adored Heidi and I was thrilled to find out what happened to Heidi and Peter as they grew up.

What about you? What is one of your childhood favorites?

Comments

  1. I had my Mum's copy of Heidi's children as a child too, and I'd forgotten all about the twins until you reminded me in this post - fond memories indeed.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment