My Featured Novel

I. About the Novel: Heidi

 The genre of Heidi is  a work of children's fiction. This novel 

was first published in 1881 by Swiss author  Johanna Spyri. This story is based on Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.  It is a novel about the events in the life of a young girl in her grandfather's care, in the Swiss Alps. It was written as a book "for children and those who love children" (as quoted from its subtitle).
Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature.  

  Adelheid (called Heidi) is five years old when her aunt Dette, who has raised Heidi since her parents' death four years earlier, takes Heidi to live with her formidable grandfather on the Swiss Alps. Dette has found a promising job inFrankfurt, but cannot leave while still Heidi's guardian. The only relative left is Heidi's grandfather, and in Dette's opinion, he should take some responsibility. Alm-Onji (Alps-Uncle), as Heidi's grandfather is commonly known, has a fearsome reputation with the villagers of Dörfli, as rumors claim that in his youth he killed a man. Now he lives a solitary life with his dog Josef in a cabin halfway up the mountain. However, Heidi quickly wins her way into his heart with her enthusiasm and intelligence, firmly establishing herself in his life. She spends her summer days on the mountain top with the goatherd Peter, whose responsibility it is to take the villagers' goats to the high mountains for pasture, and her winters occasionally visiting Peter's grandmother, a blind old woman whose dream is to one day hear her cherished book of psalms read to her. Alm-Onji's misanthropy prevents Heidi from going to school, of which she has no experience anyway.

Works Cited （参考文献）

"Heidi." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2016.

II. Versions of the Novel in the Mass Media

 A. Animation Version
　　

  Heidi, Girl of the Alps is a 1974 Japanese anime series by Zuiyo Eizo (now Nippon Animation) based on the Swiss novel Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by Johanna Spyri (1880). It was directed by Isao Takahata and features contributions by numerous other anime luminaries, including Yoichi Kotabe (character design, animation director), Toyoo Ashida (co-character design, animation director), Yoshiyuki Tomino(storyboard, screenplay), and Hayao Miyazaki (scene design, layout, screenplay).

B. Movie Version
A feature-length film was edited from the series in 1979 by Zuiyo (which by then was a separate entity from Nippon Animation, which employed many of the TV series' animation staff). All cast were replaced excluding Heidi and the grandfather. This movie is also the only incarnation of the Heidi anime to have been released commercially in the United States in English (on home video in the 1980s). Isao Takahata remarked "Neither Hayao Miyazaki nor I are completely related to any shortening version" on this work.

Works Cited （参考文献）

"Heidi." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2016.

III. About the Author:  Johanna Spyri

Johanna Spyri was born in Swis in1827.In 1852, Johanna Heusser married Bernhard Spyri. Bernhard was a lawyer. Whilst living in the city of Zürich she began to write about life in the country. Her first story, A Note on Vrony's Grave, which deals with a woman's life of domestic violence, was published in 1880; the following year further stories for both adults and children appeared, among them the novel Heidi, which she wrote in four weeks. Heidi is the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps, and is famous for its vivid portrayal of the landscape.

Her husband and her only child, named Bernard, both died in 1884. Alone, she devoted herself to charitable causes and wrote over fifty more stories before her death in 1901. She was interred in the family plot at the Sihlfeld-A Cemetery in Zürich. An icon in Switzerland, Spyri's portrait was placed on a postage stamp in 1951 and on a 20 CHF commemorative coin in 2009.

In April 2010 a professor searching for children's illustrations found a book written in 1830 by a German history teacher, Hermann Adam von Kamp, that Johanna may have used as a basis for Heidi. The 1830 story is titled Adelheide - das Mädchen vom Alpengebirge—translated, "Adelaide, the girl from the Alps". The two stories share many similarities in plot line and imagery. Spyri biographer Regine Schindler said it was entirely possible that Johanna may have been familiar with the story as she grew up in a literate household with many books.

IV. My Reaction

A. Reaction Point - character(登場人物）

• Character is the persons or things that are the focus of the plot 
• Heidi
• The character of this story is Heidi.

B. Reaction Point - setting（設定、背景、場所）

• Setting is the time, place and/or situation in which a story takes place 
• Setting of this story is in Swiss.
• Heidi lives with grandfather on the Swiss Alp.

C. Reaction Point - genre（文学のサブカテゴリ）

• Genre is a sub-category of literature
• Genre of this story is Children's literature.
• Heidi is one of the the most popular Children's literature.

D. My General Opinion
I think everyone have read Heidi. This story is very interesting.
I like this story.