A Girl of the Limberlost

Burt Brinkerhoff directed. Annette O'Toole, Heather Fairfield, and Joanna Cassidy star in this delightful film of a 1908 mother and daughter on an Indiana farm. Fairfield is the daughter who goes to high school. She buys books with money from the moths she collects from the Limberlost swamp. Cassidy is the author who pays her for the specimens. O'Toole is the mother withholding affection, because her husband drown in the Limberlost the night Fairfield was born. The photography is evocative of the violin music that the husband played. There is an owl who provides Fairfield with a listener. A homeless boy, Joey, is taken in. Chauncey Leopardi is Fairfield's first high school friend. The film is tops and should be in all family film collections.