Heidi’s Children by Charles Tritten

The two sequels to Johanna Spyri’s beloved Heidi, Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children, were neither written nor endorsed by Spyri, but were adapted from her other works by her French translator, Charles Tritten, in the 1930s, many years after the Swiss author of Heidi died. Nevertheless, I read them both when I was a girl, wanting more Heidi, and I found them to be satisfyingly Heidi-like in style and substance.

I decided to re-read Heidi’s Children, after purchasing a used copy from a friend. It’s really a beautiful and intriguing story. In Heidi Grows Up, Heidi goes away to boarding school and then returns to Dorfli to teach in the village school. Eventually, she and Peter are married (as everyone who has read Heidi would know and want them to do). Heidi’s Children begins in the springtime with Heidi and Peter expecting their first child.

Several things about the ideas and perspective in this book impressed me.

Heidi’s and Peter’s attitude about marriage, unremarkable in the 1930’s when this book was published, seems charmingly antiquated in these oh-so-enlightened times:

“. . . with Spring would come one of the greatest joys that a young wife can experience. For both Peter and Heidi felt that no marriage was complete until it was blessed with children. Spring held this promise. Even at the wedding the great event had been prepared for and the cradle had stood ready. This was the custom. Often at a Grisons wedding, the cradle was prepared and a child walked with the bride and groom carrying wheat. This was a sign that the marriage would be fruitful, that there would soon be children.”

Who would think that almost a century after the time of this story, people not only would see children as a nuisance and even a curse rather than “one of the greatest joys” and a blessing and a promise, but would also devalue marriage itself to the point that it has become an unnecessary burden or a meaningless “piece of paper” to many?

I also like the way Heidi and Peter live with their extended family and in community. Heidi’s grandfather, the Alm-Uncle, lives with them, and so does Peter’s mother, Brigitta. Jamy, the village school teacher and a school friend of Heidi’s, boards with the family, and Jamy brings her little sister, Marta, to live with the family as well. Other visitors, such as Klara and Herr Sesemann, are in and out, and it’s just a wonderful picture of a loving community, several generations, helping and serving one another.

I also liked the themes of courage overcoming fear, forgiveness and understanding, visual images and stories as vehicles for knowing God and His love. Little Marta is a good replacement child character for little Heidi, and the grown-up Heidi is someone an adult reader feels as if she would like to have for a friend. Altogether, the Heidi series is a delight, even if the authors are two different people. Tritten writes of his justification for writing the sequels in his foreward to Heidi’s Children:

“I knew Madame Spyri as well as one human, even of a different race, could know another. Every book she wrote was a labor of love for the children she knew so well. Each was written in memory of that little ‘lost one’ who used to ask her to tell him what lay beyond ‘forever after.’ I know that she never refused to grant a child’s wish as long as she lived.”

11 thoughts on “Heidi’s Children by Charles Tritten

  1. Heidi was one of my favorite books growing up, I hadn’t heard of these before, but they sound like something I would enjoy. Hopefully they aren’t too difficult to locate. Thank you so much for the information.

  2. Thank you, thank you! I’ve often wondered what these books were like, and it seems that you, having loved them as a child, and enjoyed them again as an adult, are the perfect person to learn from. I also hope I can find them.

  3. Same! I’ll be on the lookout for these days. #1 – I (shamefully?) didn’t realize that there WERE sequels and #2 – Didn’t realize that they weren’t written by the original author.

  4. I read both these books many decades ago and loved them. I can’t testify to how I would see them now, but I remember the loving treatment of the “outsiders” by the author – Heidi herself in boarding school. and then chel in the village school, in “Heidi grows up”, and Marta in “Heidi’s children”. As an outsider a major part of my life, these books gave me comfort.

  5. Thank you so much for ur review, it’s so helpful and fulfilling my quench to know more about Heidi

  6. Have all three of Heidi, Heidi Grows up and Heidi’s Children, remember them as a child and I have just got them given to me, this addition of Heidi’s Children is first Printed 1950 this addition is 195, all are in reasonable condition for their age. Am looking forward to re-reading them.

  7. These sequels read well and are similar to Johanna Spryi’s book. I’ve found a few copies of all by Charles Tritten. Good luck b

  8. As a child I read Heidi” close to 2 times a year! An older cousin loaned me Tritten’s 2 sequels, & I found them very satisfying.

    The mother of 3 sons, I read them aloud to each one, often with older brothers listening. When my mother was in her 90s and needed comforting stories, She loved it when I read “Heidi” to her!

    One son used his birthday money to buy Madame Alexander’s Austria boy, naming him Peter. In junior high school he gifted his much loved doll to me saying, “I you’ll enjoy Peter more than me now! “. Several years ago when Madame Ale ander created a Heidi and her goat, my oldest presented them to me lovingly. Now I am suggesting my book group read this book as our yearly classic!

  9. My mother born 1933 fell in love with this name……after 2 boys were born Heidi was picked way before my time so its very special to me a gift from my departed mother. Yes I have the books too.

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