The Little Colonel's Holidays

Following her successful house party, Lloyd Sherman, the Little Colonel, finds her friends returning to their homes as the end of the summer approaches, signaling the beginning of the school year. While Joyce, Eugenia, and Betty return to their homes, the Little Colonel begins to regret having met her friends, due to the loneliness of having to lose them again. But as Christmas approaches, the Little Colonel finds herself volunteering at the children's hospital where, through her dying friend, Dot, she learns the true meaning of the holidays and of friendship.

Annie Fellows Johnstonís life exemplifies success and perseverance: she wrote over forty books (one was even made into a major motion picture) during a time period when it was not customary for women to be so successful, she was a devoted wife to a husband who died only a few years after their marriage, and she was a stepmother to three children, for whom she continued to care after the death of their father. Mrs. Johnston is most famous for her thirteen-book Little Colonel Series . In 1935, Twentieth Century Fox released The Little Colonel based on the first book in the series, The Little Colonel . The movie starred Shirley Temple and Lionel Barrymore. Born on a farm in a small town in Indiana on May 15, 1863, Annie sharpened her writing skills as a young girl. Her father, a minister, died when she was two but left an exstensive collection of reading material, and her mother, an advocate for womenís education, encouraged Annie to teach and go to college. She attended the University of Iowa for a year, taught for three years, worked as a private secretary, and traveled through New England and Europe before she married a cousin, who encouraged her to write, and became a mother to his three young children. Mrs. Johnstonís unique writing style fictionalized real people and experiences. On a visit to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, in 1895, Mrs. Johnston met little Hattie Cochran,