Johanna Spyri: Heidi

When five-year-old orphan Heidi is sent to live in the Swiss Alps with grumpy Grandpa, the rest of the village take pity on her.

But Heidi soon discovers that her grandpa is gentle and kind behind his scowl, and she loves her new life running wild in the mountains with the goats, the flowers and her best friend Peter.

That is, until Heidi is forced to move far away to the soot and smoke of Frankfurt to be the companion to an unwell girl.

Will she ever return to her true home in the mountains?


Johanna Louise Spyri was a Swiss-born author of novels, notably children's stories, and is best known for her book Heidi. Born in Hirzel, a rural area in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, as a child she spent several summers near Chur in Graubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels.