Favorite Books #9--A Little Princess

The story is beautiful.

A girl full of dreams has her perfect world stolen away from her. But she bravely continues being herself despite slave labor and cruelty. And in the end, against all odds, her hopes and dreams are restored.

This storyline is a popular one, and authors have repeated it, or something very much like it, several times. But few authors have perfected it like Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

Image taken from Amazon

While this author wrote other childhood classics such as The Secret Garden, her A Little Princess was always my favorite. Growing up, I adored this book, mainly for the story itself, but also for the heroine, Sara Crewe. I suppose Sara Crewe was my ideal. She was sweet, compassionate, brave, and above all, she had an imagination! She was constantly conjuring up stories. And her stories were so beautiful, so magical, that all the children at the boarding school wanted to hear them.  When I was little, I supposed I could do the same thing. Of course, I didn't keep in mind the fact that Sara's audience rarely heard stories, while stories for kids today was as common as air. So I never got the rapt audience Sara had in the story. But still the idea enchanted me, and this book, I think, watered my dream to be an author.

My favorite parts in this book concerned the doll dresses and the food. For a while, I sewed doll dresses in abundance and the extravagance of the wardrobe of Sara's doll was inspiring.

But how I loved the food! Ms. Burnett had a skill to make me ravenously hungry. I think it had to do with the fact that she made you starve right along with her characters, so that the food was as special to you as to them. The scene in which Sara wakes up in her attic room to discover it transformed is my very favorite. I nearly cry at this scene. Sniffle, sniff, sniff.

Anyway, if you somehow missed reading this childhood classic of true royalty and triumph, you need to read it now, no matter your age. It's a touching story to be cherished again and again.