Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna's father taught her to look at the good side of things-in this case, to be glad about the crutches because she did not need to use them. It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak it may be. Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls 'The Glad Game', an optimistic and positive attitude she learned from her father.

The title character is Pollyanna Whittier, an eleven-year-old orphan who goes to live in the fictional town of Beldingsville, Vermont, with her wealthy but stern and cold spinster Aunt Polly Harrington, who does not want to take in Pollyanna but feels it as her duty to her late sister Jennifer. Some of the best known are the 1920 version starring Mary Pickford, and Disney's 1960 version starring child actress Hayley Mills, who won a special Oscar for the role. Pollyanna has been adapted for film several times. Despite the current common use of the term to mean 'excessively cheerful', Pollyanna and her father played the glad game as a method of coping with the real difficulties and sorrows that, along with luck and joy, shape every life. Due to the book's fame, 'Pollyanna' has become a byword for someone who, like the title character, has an unfailingly optimistic outlook a subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997. Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as 'Glad Books', were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith.

The book's success led to Porter soon writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Porter, considered a classic of children's literature. Pollyanna is a 1913 novel by American author.

Eleanor h porter books