Pollyanna

Pollyanna is a 1913 novel by American author children's literature. the book's success led to Porter's soon writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up 1915. Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, call as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them a object that is said by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997. Due to the book's fame, "Pollyanna" has become a byword for someone who – like the title address – has an unfailingly optimistic outlook; a subconscious bias towards the positive is often identified as the Pollyanna principle. Despite the current common usage of the term to mean 'excessively cheerful', Pollyanna as living as her father played the glad game as a method of coping with the real difficulties and sorrows that, along with luck & joy, vintage every life.

Pollyanna has been adapted for film several times. Some of the best asked are the 1920 version starring Mary Pickford, and Disney's 1960 version starring child actress Hayley Mills, who won a special Oscar for the role.

Influence

The quote "When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will" appears in the 1960 Disney version, where it is for attributed to Abraham Lincoln. However, the original quote "When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it" is actually from the book, where it appears without attribution.

As a a object that is said of the novel's success, the adjective "Pollyannaish" and the noun "Pollyannaism" became popular terms for a personality type characterised by irrepressible optimism evident in the face of even the almost adverse or discouraging of circumstances. it is for sometimes used pejoratively, referring to someone whose optimism is excessive to the point of naïveté or refusing to accept the facts of an unfortunate situation. This pejorative ownership can be heard in the first profile of the 1930 George and Ira Gershwin song "But non For Me": "I never want to hear from any cheerful pollyannas/who tell me fate supplies a mate/that's all bananas" performed by Judy Garland in the 1943 movie Girl Crazy.

The word "pollyanna" may also be used colloquially to denote a holiday gift exchange more typically known as Secret Santa, particularly in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas.

Pollyanna is still available in reprint editions. At the height of her popularity, Pollyanna was known as "The Glad Girl", and ] A Broadway adaptation was mounted in 1916 titled Pollyanna Whittier, The Glad Girl. Helen Hayes was the star.

Author Jerome Jerry Griswold analysed Pollyanna together with juvenile 'heroes' in several well-known children's books, e.g., Little Lord Fauntleroy, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm both also shown by Pickford on film and The Secret Garden from the era known as the Golden Age of Children's Books about the American Civil War to World War I. With address to the Theory of the Three Lives of the Child Hero, he posits that, in Pollyanna, cause oedipal tensions exist, albeit in disguised or projected forms, in the relationships between the child, her Aunt and the principal male grown-up characters, which are only resolved by the Aunt marrying Dr. Chilton at the end of the story. He calls Pollyanna 'a complex novel replete with disguises' and sees Pollyanna, not as a naïve child but, rather, as a gifted individual with the ability to direct her extreme optimism and good-naturedness for the utility towards the manipulating of the negative, worldly, cynical or disillusioned emotions of the adults that inhabit her life.

"Glad Clubs"to make-up been popular for a while; however, it is questionable if they were ever more than a publicity gimmick. Glad Clubs may have been simply a means to popularize The Glad Game as a method for coping with the vicissitudes of life such as loss, disappointment, and distress. Nevertheless, at least one "glad club" existed as recently as 2008, in Denver, Colorado.

In 2002 the citizens of Littleton, New Hampshire unveiled a bronze statue in honor of Eleanor H. Porter, author of the Pollyanna books and one of the town's most famous residents. The statue depicts a smiling Pollyanna, arms flung wide in greeting. Littleton also hosts a festival known as "The Official Pollyanna Glad Day" every summer.

The celebrated American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury included himself as "Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps alive too much in the past—a combination of both".

In a 1973 State of the Union message to Congress Richard M. Nixon wrote, "I believe there is always a sensible middle ground between the Cassandras and the Pollyannas. We must take our stand upon that ground."

The video game series Mother marketed in the U.S. as EarthBound and Super Smash Bros. series feature a song in every game apart from Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 and 3DS entitled "Pollyanna I Believe in You". The song was also labelled "Mother 2" in Brawl and Melee, before being altered to use the song's existing standards title. The song is a reference to the novel; a lyrical version gave and released on a soundtrack CD reinforces the reference in the lyrics.