Audiobook · read by volunteers
Pollyanna Grows Up
Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920)
Read by Mary Anderson · 32 chapters · 8 h 58
About the book
Pollyanna has recovered. The girl who learned to play the glad game, and who could not walk for so long, is on her feet again, and now she is off to Boston. There she is to live with Mrs. Carew, a woman whose heart has been broken by the loss of her nephew, while Pollyanna’s Aunt Polly has gone abroad with her new husband. The city is full of new faces, and Pollyanna sets about meeting them with the same bright curiosity as before, discovering that cheerfulness is not always an easy thing to share. In these chapters she makes friends, finds old ones again, and tests her gladness on people who are not at all sure they want it. A warm, sentimental and surprisingly spirited story in thirty-two recordings, running about nine hours.
Introduction
Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920) became famous with her novel Pollyanna in 1913, and this sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up, followed in 1915. It continues the story of the young heroine whose optimism had changed her small New England town and who now brings it to a larger stage.
Like the first book, this one is a work of children’s fiction written with adult readers in mind, too. Porter’s attitude is warm and her sentences are easy to follow. She is interested in the effect that one cheerful person can have on others, and in the question of what such cheerfulness costs and what it can and cannot fix. The character’s name has even entered the English language, which says something about the lasting influence of the first book.
The recording is made up of thirty-two short chapters, beginning with Della speaking her mind and including episodes such as a dose of Pollyanna and the game with Mrs. Carew. Together they last roughly nine hours. The whole book is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, Mary Anderson.
The book is suited to listeners who like a gentle story, to readers who enjoyed the first volume, and to anyone who would like to be reminded how people used to write about kindness without embarrassment. The book can be enjoyed on its own, although listeners who have met the heroine before will notice more of the references to earlier events. The short chapters make it an easy choice for evening listening, and a single steady voice carries the story from the first chapter to the last.
Public domain
Eleanor H. Porter died in 1920: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text