The Legend of the Bleeding-heart

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Pages: 11

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About this book

In a woodland where trees can speak, an old flax-spinner raises an orphan named Olga. The girl grows up helping with water, fruit gathering and linen, while a skeptical oak warns that kindness will be forgotten. When a prince invites Olga to the castle's balls, her foster-mother gives her a strange necklace. Its beads can provide splendid clothes, but their power depends on a charm that recalls the love behind the gift.

Annie Fellows Johnston builds this fairy tale around the contrast between the forest cottage and the glitter of court life. Flower colours, talking leaves and enchanted garments give visible form to feelings of gratitude, pride and disappointment. Olga's delight in royal attention begins to change her attitude toward everyday duties. The story offers readers a compact moral fable about remembering the care that makes good fortune possible, told through familiar household work and woodland magic.

About the author

Annie Fellows Johnston

Annie Fellows Johnston was an American author of children's fiction. She wrote the popular The Little Colonel series, which was the basis for the 1935 Shirley Temple film The Little Colonel; many of the books were illustrated by photographer Kate Matthews.