Book Review: Heidi by Johanna Spyri

In my childhood, I adored a cartoon version of Heidi that had singing characters and fairytale mountain creatures. I loved her grumpy Grandfather, who softens up because of her. I loved how Peter, the goat herder, and his animals came to recuse her from the city. This is NOT like the book at all!

At first, I was disappointed. I watched that cartoon over and over again. I loved the whimsicalness of it. It was what I was longing for. In the end, I discovered I liked the book better.

Heidi is about an orphaned girl who is being taken to live with her Grandfather in the Swiss alps by her aunt, who works in the city. The aunt and the Grandfather have an argument at the very beginning about what is the best place for a child to grow up. In the end, the Grandfather takes Heidi in. He is not really super gruff but just a hermit who lives off the land. He creates a hay bed for Heidi in the loft and gives her goat cream and fresh bread to eat for most meals. He is very kind to her but a little distant. He also sends her each day with an older boy named Peter, who tends the goats. Heidi is delighted with her life on the mountain. In the winter, she goes to school in the village at the base of the mountain and does well. After a couple of years of this, the aunt returns to take Heidi back to the city to be a companion for a wealthy family’s daughter, Clara, who is sickly and wheelchair-bound. There is an argument again between the aunt and the Grandfather, but Heidi ends up going.

Heidi is horrified at leaving her Grandfather and the mountain, but she does become good friends with Clara. They have many misadventures, and Heidi comes to a sincere Christian faith through Clara’s grandmother. This took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected this to be an overtly Christian book! Still, Heidi becomes more and more homesick to the point of having physical symptoms. When Clara’s father comes home from his travels, he and his friend, a doctor, decide Heidi should go home. He promises that Clara can come to visit.

Heidi has a warm homecoming with her Grandfather and Peter. Her Grandfather renews his faith in God, and Heidi forces Peter to learn how to read. When Clara finally comes to visit, Heidi’s Grandfather treats her very well to the point of bringing her back to full health, to the astonishment of her father and his doctor friend. Many relationships and hurts are healed, and Heidi is given many blessings in the end.

This is a very beautiful book and extremely Christian. All the pagan elements from the cartoon I grew up with were not in the book at all. What made me love this book more than the animation was the deep relationships and the inner strength Heidi exhibits. She doesn’t get rescued but actually does the rescuing through her consistent kindness, faithfulness, and love. Her faith in God doesn’t take away from that inner strength but adds to it. Never in the book is there a Deus ex-Machina. God works through the people of this book, through their virtues and flaws.

Heidi is such a refreshing children’s book compared to books often written today. The people feel genuine and complex rather than flat and stereotyped. The growth of all the characters is smooth and natural. The maturity that the children develop is what should be the goal in more books rather than the self-realization narcissism so common in children’s literature.

I also found the simplicity of Heidi’s life in the mountains charming. It may be over-idealized, but somehow it just feels like how life should be. I know when I was a child, I loved stories in which children learned this sort of safe emotional independence.

I highly recommend this book for all ages. It’s an excellent read-alone for younger children and a fun, relaxing book for adults. It’s completely clean from cover to cover and most certainly a book you’ll want to read over again!

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