books I've read

Anne Hawn's books

Who Moved My Cheese?
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Scientific Secrets for Self-Control
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Vanishing
Exercises in Knitting
The Good Dream
The Very Best of Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen
BT-Kids' Knits
Talking God
The Professor
The Christmas Files
The Finisher
Home Decor for 18-Inch Dolls: Create 10 Room Settings with Furniture and 15 Outfits with Accessories
Dracula and Other Stories
A New Song
Christy
All Quiet on the Western Front
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents


Anne Hawn Smith's favorite books »

I'm reading 150 Books

2019 Reading Challenge
2019 Reading Challenge 19614 members
<b>Are you ready to set your 2019 reading goal?</b> This is a supportive, fun group of people looking for people just like you. Track your annual reading goal here with us, and we have challenges, group reads, and other fun ways to help keep you on pace. There will never be a specific number of books to read here or pressure to read more than you can commit to. Your goal is five? Great! You think you want to read 200? Very cool! We won't kick you out for not participating regularly, but we'll love it if you do. Join us!

Books we've read

The Help
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Night Circus
The Golden Compass
11/22/63
The Little Lady Agency
Catch-22
The Good Father
A Discovery of Witches
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Color Purple
Matched
Cloud Atlas
The Princess Bride
The Catcher in the Rye


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Friday, February 04, 2011

A Little Princess

A Little PrincessA Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful story of a little girl, Sara Crew, who is the apple of her widowed father's eye. She has lived in India all her life, but she is forced to go to an exclusive boarding school, Miss Minchen's Seminary in London to be properly educated. She becomes the prize pupil when Miss Minchen discovers how incredibly wealthy her father is. Sara and her father are unusually close because her mother died when she was very young and he treats her as a little princess. Fortunately, she has been also taught to behave like a princess and to be patient, kind, good natured and polite.

Sara needs all of those attributes when it is found that her father has invested all of his money in diamond mines in South Africa and they have failed. Not only that, but he has died from a brain fever brought on by the devastating news. Miss Minchen finds out the new status of her pupil and promptly makes a drudge of her. This is really where the story begins. Sara has been well brought up and has a wonderfully vivid imagination and these things help her to endure her wretched life. She has always been kind to the little scullery maid and now finds her a friend and helper.

One of the nicest things about this book is the way it encourages reading and imaginative play as well as good manners and real integrity. Sara has to find ways to deal with her reduced circumstances without becoming bitter or giving up. If you have seen the Shirley Temple movie or one of the other versions, you may be surprised at just how much Hollywood has changed this delightful book.



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