Lovable Little Girls in Literature

These form a breed of "bright, energetic, jolly little girls with a passion for setting the world to rights" as rightly put by Humphrey Carpenter, in his "Oxford Companion to Children's Literature." They range from the Swiss "Heidi" whose love for her grandfather is as strong as "Eppie's" attachment to George Eliot's "Silas Marner", to the Canadian "Anne" (of the Green Gables) who had a theme park all to herself in distant Japan.

Susan Coolidge's Katy is a rather self-centred little girl, who bed-ridden for a long while after an fall, gets lessons in patience in "The School of Pain" from Cousin Helen, a life-long invalid. The American Pollyanna, irrepressibly optimistic, with her perennial "Glad Game", also gets into an accident, which leaves her bed-ridden for a long time, but eventually recovers.

Frances Hodgson Burnett created two famous characters, Sara Crewe (A Little Princess) & Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden), the former not spoilt but the latter very much so. How these two handle their changes in fortune are narrated in these novels.

Another American girl, Rebecca (of Sunnybrook Form) goes to live with her aunts, one stern & the other kind. How she goes through her life with "Joie de Vivre" & helped along with a businessman is the story. Jerusha Abbott of "Daddy Longlegs" is a similar creature, working in an orphanage, educated by a businessman, who senses her potential & eventually marries her.

Entering the realms of fantasy, we meet Winnie Foster, who meets in "Tuck Everlasting", the indestructible & immortal Tuck family. In "The Great Good Thing", the heroine Princess Sylvie, tired of being in the pages of the book, gets out & meets Claire, the reader, in the real world! Princess Irene in "The Princess & the Goblin" by George MacDonald fights a goblin invasion, this book being a favourite of both C.S.Lewis (Narnia) & Tolkien (Lord of the Rings). The Swedish Pippi Longstocking, is out of the world with her pigtails & incredible strength.

Girls travelling with their younger brothers feature in "The Mixed-up Files..." Where Claudia Kincaid with kid brother Jamie hide out in the Met, New York, no less! Margaret Murry & ditto kid brother Charles take to time & space travel in "A Wrinkle in Time" to rescue their father.

Sophie, a baby adrift in a cello case in the English Channel, survives, learns the cello & goes "mom-hunting" among the rooftops of Paris & gets her against all odds! The author of this "Rooftoppers", Katherine Rundell, was a Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford at 21, later got a doctorate, taught herself tightrope walking, forwards, backwards & in high-heels & is currently learning to fly!