Pollyanna

Pollyanna is a children's novel by the American writer Eleanor Hodgman Porter, first published in 1913.

Eleven-year-old Pollyanna Whittier has lost both parents and is sent to the Vermont town of Beldingsville to live with an aunt she has never met. Aunt Polly is rich, correct and entirely unprepared for a child, and she takes her niece in out of duty rather than affection. Pollyanna's father left her a game in which the object is to find something to be glad about in any situation, and she plays it with everyone she meets, which slowly changes the town around her. The person who needs it most is the one who wants it least.

Aunt Polly's household runs on schedules, economy and disapproval, and a cheerful child in the middle of it is more unsettling than welcome. The setting is a New England town in which the neighbours' business is everybody's business.