Review: Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read 'Heidi' when I was in the 6th or 7th standard and fell in love with the beautiful descriptions of sunshine on mountain slopes, primroses and wildflowers, forget-me-not blue skies, fresh goat-milk, cheese, warm bread, cozy beds of hay and soft white rolls.
Heidi is a sweet little girl who is abandoned by her aunt at her grandfather's hut in the Alps, after her mother's death. Unfazed by her circumstances, Heidi revels in her new surroundings, thaws her surly grandfather and makes friends with a goat-keeper named Peter, his mother and grandmother.
Three years pass and everything is perfect in Heidi's life until her Aunt Dete arrives to take her to Frankfurt as a companion to a rich but invalid girl. Claustrophobic in her new life, Heidi longs for the freedom of her mountain life and her loving grandfather and endeavors to get back.
I recently realized that Johanna Spyri wrote this book in 1880 and I was extremely surprised at how old the book was. Even more so when I started re-reading it. Most of the translation was really bad, and some names did not seem familiar (e.g. A village woman's name as I remember was Barbel, but is Barbie in this new book. Clara is Klara and Aunt Dete is 'Detie'). Miss Rottenmeier (in this edition) was referred to as 'Fraulein' in my old copy which is how I came to learn that word as a kid. I also realized that Heidi was mostly preachy and too good to be true. It is interesting how I never understood these nuances earlier. Oh wait, I was a kid too!  To make things worse, I also read somewhere recently that Johanna Spyri could have ripped off this story from a relatively unknown author, Adam Von Kamp, who wrote a similar story some 50 years before Heidi was published. Sigh!
I am not sure I want to re-read my childhood books for nostalgia anymore. I'd rather leave my memories unsullied. However, despite all the tarnishing that I perceived as an adult, I consoled myself with the fact that 'Heidi' to me was mostly about the soft white rolls! But wait for it.....

The biggest dampener on my childhood imagination was brought about by my realization that 'soft white rolls' are actually

and not as I always imagined them in my naivety as...

Thanks Google, adulthood and reality!

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