A Little Princess

I grew up watching this movie so I was very shocked when I read the book and it wasn’t as clean cut and happy as the movie. The story is about a little girl named Sarah who lived in India with her rich father but when her father leaves for war she is put in a boarding school in New York. She lives there as a student for awhile until it is found that her father died leaving her penniless. In the book her father had actually given all his money to a friend investing in diamond mines who lost all his money either way leaving Sarah penniless. She is demoted to a servant girl and makes fast friends with the other serving girl Becky. In the end though Sarah manages to keep all her old friends too because this is a children’s novel and friends aren’t supposed to care about social standings. Mrs. Minchin the evil boarding school teacher who hates Sarah of course is really mad that Sarah still thinks she’s a princess even though she’s poor and tries to keep all the other girls away from her. Mean while in the movie version the neighbor next door and his magical Indian care taker takes in a wounded soldier who is actually Sarah’s father who has temporary amnesia and can’t remember he has a daughter. When all the girls work together to steal back some of possessions that were taken away from her when her father died Mrs. Minchin accuses Sarah of being a thief and calls the police to take her away. Sarah manages to escape to her next-door neighbor’s house where she finds her father. As she is begging him to remember her the police drag her off. As they’re about to take her away the father suddenly and magically regains his memory and in a touching scene they hug each other in the rain. This is the movie end in the book her father really is dead and there is no wounded soldier with amnesia. Instead the neighbor himself turns out to be the friend who lost all of Sarah’s money who conveniently found it after her father’s death and the Diamond mines began to pay off. He had come to New York to search for Sarah and give her all the money that rightfully belongs to her. She pays the neighbor a visit one day for reasons I have forgotten and they find out who she really is and he decides to take care of her and love her forever. I like the movie version better.