Johanna Spyri
Author biography. Trumpet Publishing House Authors Directory.
Who she was
Johanna Spyri was born Johanna Heusser at Hirzel, in the canton of Zurich, on June 12, 1827, and died in Zurich on July 7, 1901. Hirzel is a village in the hills above the lake, and the mountain childhood in her books is drawn from her own.
She married a lawyer and moved to the city, where she was unhappy for years. She began writing in her forties. Her only son died of tuberculosis at twenty-eight, and her husband died the same year. She wrote steadily for the rest of her life and gave much of what she earned to charitable causes.
Why she wrote it
Heidi was published in two parts in 1880 and 1881, written, by her own account, quickly.
The shape of it comes straight out of her own life: a child taken from the mountains and put into a wealthy city household, where she has everything except the thing she needs. Spyri had made that move herself, from Hirzel to Zurich, and had been homesick in a comfortable house. The sickness Heidi suffers in Frankfurt is written by someone who knew what it felt like.
The book we publish, and why
We publish Heidi as a Digital Junior Genius Reader.
The book sets two ways of living against each other without lecturing about either. Plain food, hard work, open air, and people who are genuinely glad of you, against comfort, fine manners, and a household where nobody has time. It is not a simple argument for poverty. The Sesemann household is kind in its way, and Clara is loved. It is an argument about what a child actually needs to thrive, which turns out to be less than money and more than attention.
The benefit is that children learn that where you are and who keeps you shapes what you become. They also meet, in the grandfather, an adult who is difficult and gruff and entirely dependable, which is a useful thing for a child to have seen.
How to read it with a child
Suits reading aloud from about six and independent reading from about eight. As a Digital Junior Genius Reader it is built for a child working through it with the method rather than simply consuming it.
The Frankfurt section is where children slow down, because the pace drops and Heidi is miserable. That is the point of it and it is worth staying with, since the return to the mountain only lands if the reader has felt the absence.
The question to ask is which things Heidi actually missed. Children will say the mountain first. Press a little and they arrive at the grandfather, the goats, and being useful, which is a more interesting answer and closer to what the book is about.
Pair it with
- The Junior Genius Method, our approach of Read, Notice, Write, Recite, Remember, Question, Apply, which the Digital Junior Genius Reader edition is built around.
- Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, for another story about what kind of care lets a creature thrive, and what neglect looks like when it is well-mannered.
- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, the natural next book: another child placed in a household that did not expect her, who changes it.
Her principal works
- A Leaf on Vrony's Grave, 1871. Her first published story, written for an adult readership.
- Heidi's Years of Learning and Travel, 1880, and Heidi Makes Use of What She Has Learned, 1881. The two parts now published together as Heidi.
- Gritli's Children, 1883 to 1884.
- Cornelli, 1890.
- Rico and Wiseli, and numerous further stories and collections for children through the 1880s and 1890s.
General reference on Johanna Spyri. External links open outside Trumpet Publishing House.
Our editions
This collection grows as further editions and formats are added, so it is worth returning to.
All Trumpet editions by Johanna Spyri