There’s so much sweetness in this book that I’d die of diabetes two times over. I don’t hate the message of being grateful of what you have, but it is hammered down page after page after page that you just want to spew all this sweetness out. Once again, I’m biting myself right in the ass because I’m in the wrong age bracket for this, but I got an irrational nagging feeling to knock books down.
It seems that once you’ve read one children’s novel about a little girl, you’ve read them all. Burnett, Coolidge, Montgomery, even Spyri merges into one. Polyanna sounds and feels exactly the same and soapy as Anne, Katy, that little girl from the Secret Garden and Heidi. It’s all the same recycled tropes, storyline and outcomes.
One trope that really gets to me is the crippled child. Why do authors feel it necessary for one of the child characters (often the main character) to be crippled under tragic circumstances? Out of the books above, the only one that I can think of without the cripple is Anne of the Green Gables. Is it necessary to teach a lesson of endurance and acceptance by taking away a character’s legs? Authors use this for the ultimate triumph, that in most of these cases, the child will be able to walk again after going through some hardship.
Then there are so many characters in the verge of tears after finding out about the rules of the Glad Game — to be grateful no matter what. Everybody is almost crying at some point or another. Porter is trying way too hard to tearjerk the reader. Like I said, there is nothing wrong with the message. I had a call with my best mate the other day and he told me that every time I wake up, I should think about three things that I am grateful for. The message is relevant for adults as it is for children.
There are other things that bother me about this book, like the Pendleton character. After having fallen in love with the Polyanna’s mother, he was very insistent on having Polyanna live with her. I find his motives ambiguous and creepy, not heartwarming. Surely I’m not the only one?
I’m also bothered by the fact that a lot of the priority of charitable giving is for the “heathens” so that missionaries can go to their native lands and spread the word of religion. Polyanna no doubt, is a very white book. The “heathens” when they are mentioned are already otherised by default, especially when Polyanna promoted the Jimmy Bean cause — that the Ladies Aides should be donating to local problems as opposed to problems abroad. There is double strength in the poison: that the heathens should be converted irrespective of their culture, and that issues abroad should be neglected over domestic issues.
I expected Polyanna to be a quick and easy read. But like other books that you’ve lost interest in halfway through, what I thought a book that I can finish within one day took me three days. There’s not many more children’s novels in my list to complete thankfully, but in earnest, I would love to find another Heidi, another Little Prince.
But whichever child pick up these books, I sincerely hope that these books help them to be better people. Perhaps I’ve become too jaded, too cynical and too adult to appreciate the sentimentality in these novels anymore and the fault isn’t in the books themselves but in me. This I’d concede.
