Soon after the eleven-year-old Pollyanna Whittier is left an orphan, she is sent to live with her rich Aunt Polly in Beldingsville, Vermont. Pollyanna's aunt is a strict and dutiful woman she doesn't even know. Aunt Polly puts Pollyanna in a tiny attic room where she hopes Pollyanna will be out of the way. But Pollyanna is the kind of girl who can always find something to be happy about, no matter how sad life may seem at the time. She calls it "playing the glad game." Soon everyone around this remarkable girl, from John Pendleton, a rich but lonely bachelor, to Aunt Polly herself, falls under her special spell.Until only day something so terrible happens that even Pollyanna doesn't know how to feel glad anymore