Ages 6^-9. With pretty illustrations of idyllic mountain scenes, Krupinski retells Spyri's classic story in picture-book form. The bright, collage-style illustrations in gouache and colored pencil are stiff and decorative, and the shortened version telescopes the 300-page novel into a few pages, so that much of the emotional impact is lost ("Soon after I arrived, I grew homesick" ). Why not let children wait a few years and enjoy Spyri's story, with or without the pictures? Hazel Rochman --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly
This truncated retelling of orphan Heidi's simple life in the Swiss Alps and her sojourn in the big city seems almost as indebted to the Shirley Temple film as to Johanna Spyri's 1880 novel. Krupinski's (A New England Scrapbook) heroine mimics Temple, curls, button nose and all, though she lacks the actress's expressive smile and gestures. Similarly blank-faced characters contrast with Krupinski's serene, lushly idealized landscape paintings: the people seem like wax dolls, but the glowing blankets of flowers make the Alps heaven on earth. The text emphasizes the sensual joys of fresh goat's milk, fir trees "with their piney scent," Heidi's sweet-smelling bed in her grandfather's hay loft, etc., but that is its only demonstrable strength. Both Heidi's relationship with her grandfather and the idealized subplot about wheelchair-bound Klara's learning to walk are woodenly described; little space is given to dialogue and even less to Heidi's emotions. The plot, too, is severely condensed: "Many more good things happened after that day." The book succeeds as a portrayal of the joys of mountain life, but otherwise fails to do justice to Spyri's story of a girl's courage and persistence. Ages 5-9.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Review
"Heidi has charmed and intrigued readers since its original publication in 1880...Spryi's story will never grow wearisome."
-- "Amazon.com, editorial review" --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Back Cover
When Heidi, a cheerful 5-year-old orphan, comes to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps, she brings a bright ray of sunshine into the lives of the people around her. Young Peter, a goatherd, shares her love of nature, and his blind grandmother delights in the little girl's bubbling personality. Even Heidi's surly and hermit-like grandfather, the old Alm-Uncle, finds his long-lost grandchild a source of immense pleasure.
A few years later, when she is forced to go to Frankfurt to serve as a companion for Klara, a well-to-do but sickly girl, Heidi must leave her beloved mountains and friends behind—an experience that proves highly traumatic to the innocent and sensitive little girl. But her return home and a visit from Klara result in magical moments that will leave young readers thoroughly captivated by this heartwarming tale of an unforgettable child and her effect on the people around her.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Publisher
6 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
from CHAPTER 1: The Alm-Uncle
FROM THE pleasantly situated old town of Maienfeld a footpath leads up through shady green meadows to the foot of the mountains, which, as they gaze down on the valley, present a solemn and majestic picture. Anyone who follows it will soon catch the keen fragrance of grassy pasture lands, for the footpath goes up straight and steep to the Alps. One bright, sunny June morning, a tall, sturdy looking girl, evidently a native of the mountains, was climbing this narrow path. She led by the hand a little maiden, whose cheeks glowed as if a ruddy flame were under her dark-brown skin. And what wonder? In spite of the hot June sun, the child was bundled up as if for protection against the sharpest cold. She could not have been five years old, but it was impossible to tell anything about her natural figure, for she wore two or three dresses, one over the other, and a big red cotton scarf round her neck; her feet were lost in heavy hobnailed shoes, and the little thing was quite formless as she made her hot and laborious way up the mountain.
At the end of an hour of steady climbing the two girls came to the group of houses that lies halfway up the Alm Mountain and is called Dorfli, or the Little Village. Here they were greeted from almost every cottage, and by everyone in the street, for the older of the two girls had reached her home. Nevertheless, she made no pause but hurried on, answering all questions and greetings as she went. At the very end of the hamlet, as she was passing the last of the scattered cottages, a voice from the doorway cried:
‘‘Wait a moment, Dete, I’ll go with you, if you are bound up the mountain.’’
The girl addressed stopped; immediately the child withdrew her hand and sat down on the ground. ‘‘Are you tired, Heidi?’’ asked her companion. ‘‘No, I am hot,’’ replied the little girl. ‘‘We are almost there,’’ said her companion encouragingly. ‘‘You must put out all the strength you have for a little while longer; it won’t take us more than an hour.’’
Just then a large, pleasant-looking woman came out of the cottage and joined them. The little girl jumped to her feet and followed the two women, who had instantly fallen into a lively conversation regarding all the inhabitants of the village and of the neighborhood. ‘‘But really, Dete, where are you taking the child?’’asked the newcomer. ‘‘It is your sister’s little girl, isn’t it—the orphan?’’
‘‘Yes, it is,’’ replied the other. ‘‘I am taking her up to her grandfather; she will have to stay there.’’
‘‘What! the little girl is going to live with the Alm- Uncle? You must have lost your senses, Dete! How can you think of doing such a thing? The old man will send you back with such a scheme as that.’’
‘‘He can’t do it; he’s her grandfather, and it is time for him to look out for her; I have had her till now, and I must tell you, Barbel, that I could not think of letting her hinder me from taking such a place as I have just had offered me. Her grandfather must do his part now.’’
‘‘That’s very well, if he were like other men,’’ urged Barbel with some indignation. ‘‘But you know what he is. What will he do with a child—especially with such a young one? He won’t hear of such a thing—But where are you going?’’
‘‘To Frankfurt,’’ said Dete. ‘‘I have an extra good place there. The family was down at the Baths last summer; I had charge of their rooms, and they wanted then to take me back with them. I couldn’t manage it; but they are here again this year, and still want me to go with them, and I am going; you may be sure of that.’’
‘‘I’m glad I’m not in the child’s place!’’ cried Barbel with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘‘Nobody knows what ails the old man up there. He will have nothing to do with a living soul; from one end of the year to the other he never sets foot in a church; and if once in a twelvemonth he comes down with his thick staff, everyone keeps out of his way and is afraid of him. With his heavy gray eyebrows and his tremendous beard he looks like a heathen and a savage, and people are glad enough not to meet him alone.’’
‘‘Nevertheless,’’ said Dete stubbornly, ‘‘he’s her grandfather, and it’s his business to look after the child; he won’t do her any harm; if he does, he will have to answer for it.’’
‘‘I should like to know,’’ said Barbel inquisitively, ‘‘I should really like to know what the old man has on his conscience that makes him look so fierce and live all alone up there on the Alm and keep almost hidden from sight. People tell all sorts of stories about him; of course you must know something about it, Dete; your sister must have told you; hasn’t she?’’
‘‘Of course she has, but I hold my tongue; if he should hear of it, I should suffer!’’
But Barbel had long desired to know the real cause of the Alm-Uncle’s strange behavior, and why it was that he looked so gloomy and lived by himself on the mountain, and why people always spoke of him in a low voice, as if they were afraid to be against him and yet would not say anything in his favor. Barbel also was ignorant of the reason that all the people in the village called him the Alm-Uncle, for of course he could not be the actual uncle of all the inhabitants; but as everyone called him so, she did the same and never spoke of the old man as anything else than Ohi, which in the speech of that region means uncle. Barbel had only recently married into the village; before that her home had been down in the valley at Prattigau, and she was not familiar with all the happenings and all the curious characters of the village and the surrounding region through a long series of years.
Her good friend Dete, on the other hand, was a native of the village and had lived there till within a year. Then her mother had died and she had gone down to Ragatz, where the Baths are, and had found a fine position as chambermaid in a great hotel. She had come from Ragatz that very morning with the little girl, having had the chance to ride as far as Maienfeld on a hay wagon which an acquaintance of hers was driving home.
Barbel thought that this was a good chance to find out something, and she was bound not to let it slip. She seized Dete’s arm familiarly and said: ‘‘But one can learn the real truth from you instead of the gossip which is talked; I am sure you know the whole story. Come now, just tell me what is the matter with the old man; has he always been so feared? Has he always been such a hermit?’’
‘‘I can’t tell whether he has always been so or not; I am twenty-six now, and he is certainly seventy, and of course I never saw him when he was young; you might know that. If I were certain that he would never again be seen in all Prattigau, I might tell you all sorts of things about him; my mother was from Domleschg, and so was he.’’
‘‘There now, Dete, what do you mean?’’ exclaimed Barbel, a little offended. ‘‘You need not be so severe on our gossip in. Prattigau; and, besides, I can keep a secret or two if need be. Now tell me; you shan’t regret it.’’
‘‘Well, then, I will; but mind you hold your tongue,’’ said Dete warningly. Before she began she glanced round to see if the little girl were so close at their heels as to hear every word that was said. The child was not to be seen; she must have ceased following them some distance back, but in their lively conversation they had not noticed it. Dete stood still and gazed all round. There were several turns in the footpath; nevertheless they could see almost all the way down to the village. Not a soul was in sight.
‘‘I see her!’’ exclaimed Barbel. ‘‘There she is! Don’t you see her?’’ and she pointed with her finger to a place quite distant from the path. ‘‘She is climbing up the cliffs with the goatherd Peter and his goats. Why is he so late today with his animals? But it is just as well, for he can look after the child, and you will be all the better able to talk with me.’’
‘‘Peter needn’t trouble himself to look after her,’’ remarked Dete. ‘‘She is not dull for a child of five years; she keeps her eyes open and sees what is going on. I have already noticed that, and it’s a good thing for her that she does. The old man has nothing to leave her but his two goats and his mountain hut.’’
‘‘And did he once have more?’’ asked Barbel.
‘‘He? Well, I should say that he did once have more,’’ replied Dete warmly. ‘‘He used to have the finest farm in Domleschg. He was the eldest son and had only one brother, who was quiet and well behaved. But the elder would do nothing but play the fine gentleman and travel about the country, mixing with bad people that nobody knew about. He drank and gambled away the whole property; and so it happened that his father and mother died, one first and then the other, from sheer grief; and his brother, who was also reduced to beggary, went away out of humiliation, nobody knew where; and the uncle himself, as he had nothing left but a bad name, also disappeared— at first no one knew whither, then it was reported that he had gone with the soldiers to Naples, and after that nothing more was heard of him for twelve or fifteen years. Then he suddenly appeared again in Domleschg with a half-grown boy and tried to find a home for him among his relations. But every door was closed to him, and no one wanted to know anything more about him. This made him very bitter; he said he would never set foot in Domleschg again, and he came here to Dorfli and lived with the boy. His wife was probably a Grison woman whom he had come across down below and lost soon after their marriage. He must have had some money still, for he let the boy Tobias learn the carpenter’s trade; and he was a steady fellow and well thought of by all the people in Dorfli. But nobody had confidence in the old man, and it was said that he had deserted from Naples, that he had got into trouble, that he had killed somebody, not in war of course, but in some quarrel. But we recognize the relationship, for my mother’s grandmother was his grandmother’s first cousin. So we called him uncle, and as we are related to almost all the people in Dorfli, on father’s side, they all call him uncle, and since he went up on the Alm he has been known as the Alm-Uncle.’’
‘‘But what became of Tobias?’’ asked Barbel eagerly.
‘‘Wait and I’ll tell you. I can’t tell everything in one breath!’’ exclaimed Dete. ‘‘Tobias was serving his time in Mels, and as soon as he finished he came home to Dorfli and married my sister Adelheid, for they had always been fond of each other, and after their marriage they lived very happily together. But it didn’t last long. Two years after, while Tobias was working on a new house, a beam fell on him and killed him. Adelheid’s fright and grief when her husband was brought home so disfigured threw her into a violent fever, from which she did not recover. She never was very strong, and was often in such a condition that it was almost impossible to tell whether she was asleep or awake. Only two weeks after Tobias’s death Adelheid, too, was buried. Then the sad fate of the two was in everybody’s mouth far and wide, and it was hinted and openly declared that it was a judgment the uncle deserved for his wicked life. It was said so to his face; even the pastor warned him seriously to repent, but he only grew more and more cross and hard and no longer spoke to anyone, and everyone avoided him.
‘‘Suddenly it was reported that the uncle had gone up on the Alm and no longer came down at all; since then he has stayed there and lives apart from God and man.
‘‘Mother and I took Adelheid’s little child; she was a year old. Last summer mother died, and as I wanted to work down at the Baths, I took Heidi to board with old Ursel up in Pfafferserdorf. I was able to stay at the Baths all winter. I found plenty of work, because I could sew and mend; and early in the spring the lady I served last year came back from Frankfurt, and she is going to take me home with her. Day after tomorrow morning we start. It is a good place, I can tell you.’’
‘‘And now are you going to give the child to the old man up there? I’m surprised that you should think of such a thing, Dete,’’ said Barbel reproachfully.
‘‘What do you mean?’’ retorted Dete. ‘‘I have done my duty by the child. What else could I do with her now? I don’t think I could take a child scarcely five years old to Frankfurt. But where are you going, anyway, Barbel? We are halfway up the Alm now.’’
‘‘I have already reached the place where I was going. I want to speak to old goatherd Peter’s wife. She does spinning for me in winter. So good-by, Dete; good luck to you!’’ --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3. In telescoping Spyri's 300-page novel into a picture book, Krupinski puts Heidi in charge of telling her story. The efficient first-person narrative is well served by crisply detailed watercolor illustrations depicting Grandfather's house, the Swiss mountainside, and the people and goats who live there. The austere depictions of Heidi's detainment in the city in Klara's house contrast well with the lush mountain scenes. Pages are awash in accurately rendered alpine flowers. The children are winsome; Heidi resembles Shirley Temple. Youngsters who crave the full emotional story will no doubt need to be led to original versions, such as that illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith (Morrow, 1996), but Krupinski has created a fine introduction.?Susan Hepler, Alexandria City Public Schools, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Author
Johanna Spyri was born in 1827 in Hirzel, Switzerland. In 1852, she moved to Zürich, where she began to write stories about life in the country. Heidi’s Years of Wandering and Learning, usually abbreviated as Heidi, is by far the most well known. Published throughout the world, it has inspired more than twenty film or television productions, a musical drama, and a tourist area―Heidiland―in Switzerland. Johanna Spyri died in 1901.
Maja Dusíková was born in Piestany, Czechoslovakia, and now lives in Florence, Italy. One of the most celebrated children’s book illustrators in Europe, she has a pet rabbit named Cici that runs under her table while she paints and doesn’t like carrots. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. About the Author
Johanna Spyri (1827-1901) was born in the Swiss village of Hirzel. as a child, she lived a healthy outdoor life, tending the family goats and sometimes helping her doctor father look after his patients. she later settled in Zurich and began to write to raise money for wounded refugees. Heidi, published in 1880, quickly became a beloved children's classic all around the world. Sally Grindley began writing for children in 1984 while working for a children's book club and is now the author of many acclaimed picture books. Her lively retelling of Heidi retains the feeling of the original, while making it easily accessible to young children. She lives in Gloucestershire, England, with her family. Pamela Venus is a parent and grandmother. she most enjoys illustrating books for and about children, her chosen career from the age of five. she lives and works in a cottage in north Yorkshire, England. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Amazon.com Review
Johanna Spyri's classic story of a young orphan sent to live with her grumpy grandfather in the Swiss Alps is retold in it's entirety in this beautifully bound hardcover edition. Heidi has charmed and intrigued readers since it's original publication in 1880. Much more than a children's story, the narrative is also a lesson on the precarious nature of freedom, a luxury too often taken for granted. Heidi almost loses her liberty as she is ripped away from the tranquility of the mountains to tend to a sick cousin in the city. Happily, all's well that ends well, and the reader is left with only warm, fuzzy thoughts. Spryi's story will never grow wearisome--and this is a very appealing edition. --Naomi Gesinger --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Review
"The Puffin Classic series is the perfect way of reading the old and the new -- and loving both.' - Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids 'At three hours across three CDs, you get a whole lot of entertainment for your money.' - Michelle Stanistreet, Sunday Express --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. 
![Heidi (Be Classic) by [Johanna Spyri, Veera Hiranandani]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41IduIa5ukL._SY346_.jpg)
