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Johanna Spyri is a Swiss author of children's stories, most known for her Heidi, a book that many generations grew up reading. Her stories provide great entertainment for today's children, too, but they are much more than fun stories for kids: they are delightful stories of great educational value, too.

First published in 1921, this great story is considered to be a little old-fashioned,... More

Johanna Spyri is a Swiss author of children's stories, most known for her Heidi, a book that many generations grew up reading. Her stories provide great entertainment for today's children, too, but they are much more than fun stories for kids: they are delightful stories of great educational value, too.

First published in 1921, this great story is considered to be a little old-fashioned, but no critic can deny the values of the story, both in terms of style, recounting technique, character building and wisdom. The full title of the story is Mazli: the Story of the Swiss Valleys, and it has not one, not two, but more than eight child characters - children of different ages, each of them a complex, stand-alone characters. There are numerous adults in the story, too, making the plot rich and busy. The protagonist is Mazli, a young girl who comes from a large family of five children. She is cute, talkative, everybody's darling who has a big mouth and a big heart, too and a character that sets everything and everyone in motion around her.

Just like Spyri's more famous Heidi stories, Maezli also unfolds against the background of the Swiss Alps - an area of great beauty, but also a place where life is harsh. Though Spyri lived in Zurich most of her life, the time she spent in the mountains as a child marked her profoundly and her descriptions of the landscape and the living conditions up there prove that she not only loved, but also knew the Alps.

Spyri's books are appreciated by readers today not only for the vivid accounts of the landscape, but also for the author's deep understanding of children and adults alike - her characters are well-penned and lively, they make mistakes and then correct them, they have virtues and character faults, like all of us, populating stories that are easy to relate to and great fun to read.

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