What sort of small town turns a blind eye to a homeless 10-year-old boy lingering around, presumably getting more desperate and bedraggled? I can't help wondering what his lifestyle looked like in the meantime. I've got to add though, Jimmy's plight is deeply disturbing, even in a feel-good story, because it takes months before a stable home becomes possible, and even then it's sort of grudgingly at first. I appreciate the laugh we get when Pollyanna mentions the skeleton he keeps in his closet. (That's my attempt at the game!) There is Mr John Pendleton, the taciturn gentleman who, similar to Miss Polly, refuses to move on from being turned down by a woman he loved years ago.

I'm glad we rarely come across quite such sourpusses in the twenty-first century. Aunt Polly is surely a product of the austere nineteenth century. There are other characters with great supporting roles. Hey folks, please do your research before slinging mud at a person who is right on board with your key principles. Some of the same columnists, life coaches and psychologists who endorse gratitude journals and blessing jars are the same people who say, 'I'm not suggesting that you become a Pollyanna.' As a matter of fact, I believe they are. She just chooses to accentuate the good, which seems a healthy way to live. I think people assume that she refuses to acknowledge the bad side of life at all, choosing to live in a delusional world of denial. But Pollyanna lives the proverb so that it's practical and not hackneyed. A more old-fashioned way of saying it is that every cloud has a silver lining. Whenever we pounce on these elusive goods rather than grumble about whatever is getting us down, we'll weather trials faster. In every situation, there will always be something to be glad about and searching for it is part of the fun. Being asked to take her orphan niece under her wing seems a huge imposition, but Pollyanna is a cheery soul who manages to transform the gloomy attitudes of not only her aunt but many other townspeople with the 'Glad Game' her father taught her. Aunt Polly is stewing over a failed love affair from years ago, and seems to think her history of disappointment excuses her for making everyone else's lives miserable too.

11-year-old Pollyanna, is sent to live with her gruff Aunt Polly after the death of her minister father.

Pollyanna eleanor porter