"A Little Princess" is a children's novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The book tells the story of Sara Crewe, a young girl who is sent to a boarding school in London while her father goes off to fight in the war. Sara is a gifted and imaginative child who is adored by her father and treated like a princess, but her life takes a dramatic turn when her father dies, leaving her penniless and alone. Despite her newfound poverty, Sara remains optimistic and kind, drawing on her vivid imagination to cope with her difficult circumstances. She befriends several of the other girls at the boarding school. However, her kindness and imagination also attract the jealousy and cruelty of the school's headmistress, Miss Minchin. As the story unfolds, Sara's resilience and spirit are put to the test, but she never loses hope or her belief in the power of kindness and imagination. How will Sara spend her life? How will she cope with her problems? To find out answers to these questions, readers should read this heartwarming and uplifting story about the power of imagination, resilience, and kindness.
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan M. Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townesend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery. In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
4.5 Better than expected. I remember watching this movie over and over as a little girl and it was still just as magical every time. When I started reading this I was so afraid it was going to be as disappointing as cool-aid (you think it's the best drink in the world as a kid then you try it as an adult and realize its just nasty red syrup). That wasn't the case for this book. It still kept that nostalgic feel, while at the same time showed me a deeper appreciation for the moral lessons this story portrayed through the magical imagination of a little girl. "If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that, - warm things kind things, sweet things- help and comfort and laughter-...." This is definitely a book I plan to read with my kids.