Pollyanna vs The House of Seven Gables Readalong

Pollyanna

Eleanor Hodgman Porter, Porter, Neil Reed, Lee Giles

1912

The whole town is playing the game, and the whole town is wonderfully happier-and all because of one little girl who taught the people a new game, and how to play it. Suddenly orphaned, Pollyanna is sent across the country to a small town in Vermont, where she will live with her strict Aunt Polly. But Pollyanna doesn't seem to notice how stern and unfeeling her aunt really is. When feeling unhappy, she simply plays her "glad" game-finding a silver lining in every cloud. Eventually, Pollyanna brightens the lives of everyone in town with her infectious game, and finds a home for every stray cat, dog, and child she encounters. But then a terrible accident happens and Pollyanna can't find anything to feel glad about anymore. All her new friends turn out to support her, but will that be enough to restore Pollyanna's cheerful outlook on life?

The House of Seven Gables Readalong

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1851

FThis enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet - in part because of blemishes on his own family history - he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety's façade and exposed the true human condition.