Heidi
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50 free Heidi trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Heidi has been read for well over a century, and its picture of a little girl, a gruff grandfather and a hut high in the Alps is one of the best known in children's fiction. At heart it is a story about belonging: a child sent away from the place she loves, and what that costs her. This quiz starts with the novel: the characters on the mountain and in the grand house far away, the scenes readers remember, and the author behind them. It then moves to the screen, with questions on the 2015 film, the Hollywood and television versions, and the animated series that carried the tale around the world. It suits anyone who grew up with the book or a film of it, book clubs and classes reading it now, and families who have just watched the 2015 film together. Every answer comes with a brief explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the original novel Heidi, what is the young heroine's hair like?
Short, black and curly
Short, black and curly hair, with black eyes to match, is how a street boy describes her in the book. A sequel by another hand later gave her long, straight, fair hair.
Q 02Which US network cut away from a thrilling football finish in 1968 to start its film Heidi on time?
NBC
NBC switched to the film at seven o'clock sharp, and viewers in the East missed two touchdowns in the final minute. The network's president later made a formal apology.
Q 03Which child star, Hollywood's top box-office draw at the time, played the title role in 1937's Heidi?
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple was in her third straight year as cinema's biggest attraction. She struggled to milk the goat on set, so the director rigged a hidden tube to fake it.
Q 04In the novel Heidi, what does a jealous Peter send crashing down the mountainside, only to confess later?
A wheelchair
A wheelchair belonging to Clara was smashed to pieces, and the loss did her good: with nothing to sit in, she began trying to stand and slowly learned to take steps.
Q 05To which city is Heidi taken against her will to be a companion to Clara, a wealthy girl who cannot walk?
Frankfurt
Frankfurt stifles her: told that a church tower gives a view for miles, she climbs one hoping to see her mountains and finds only a sea of roofs and chimney-pots.
Q 06In Heidi, which night-time habit of the unhappy girl do the servants in Clara's house mistake for a ghost?
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking left the front door standing open each morning, terrifying the staff. Clara's father kept watch one night and found a barefoot girl in a nightgown.
Q 07Which ailment, once nicknamed the Swiss illness by physicians, leaves Heidi thin and pale in the city?
Homesickness
Homesickness was first written up as a medical condition in 1688, after Swiss mercenaries were seen pining for their own landscapes. In the novel it wastes Heidi until she is sent back to the Alps.
Q 08Which author, later honoured on a Swiss postage stamp and a commemorative coin, wrote the children's classic Heidi?
Johanna Spyri
Johanna Spyri wrote the novel in just four weeks. She went on publishing stories for children and adults until her death in 1901.
Q 09What does Heidi bring home from the keeper of a church tower, sending the stern housekeeper into a panic?
Kittens
Kittens from the tower-keeper's cat delighted Clara, but the housekeeper fled into the study and locked the door until every one had been taken away.
Q 10Tourists from which country, where the novel was first translated in 1920, flock to Heidi's corner of the Alps?
Japan
Japan has loved the tale ever since, and the book largely shaped how the country pictures Switzerland. The region around the story's setting now markets itself under the heroine's name.
Q 11In the 2015 film Heidi, which relative tricks the girl into leaving her grandfather for a household in the city?
Her aunt
Her aunt Dete had raised the orphan for years before handing her to the old man. She comes back to take the girl away as companion to a rich family's daughter.
Q 12Which actor from the wartime drama Downfall plays the gruff grandfather in the 2015 film Heidi?
Bruno Ganz
Bruno Ganz said he could not refuse a story he called a national epic in Switzerland. Born in Zürich, he held the Iffland-Ring, passed down from one great stage actor to the next.
Q 13Grandfather's brown goat in Heidi is named after a bear; which bird gives the white goat its name?
A swan
Q 21What does Heidi hoard in her wardrobe in the city as a present for Peter's elderly grandmother?
Bread rolls
Bread rolls of fine white flour were all the old woman could manage, since the hard dark loaves of the mountain were too tough to chew. Heidi pocketed the one beside her plate at every dinner and supper.
Q 22Which trade did Heidi's father Tobias follow before a falling beam killed him when she was a baby?
Carpenter
Carpenter Tobias had learned his trade in the town of Mels and died only two years after marrying. His widow never recovered from the shock, leaving Heidi an orphan.
Q 23What does Heidi read aloud to Peter's blind grandmother, who can no longer make out the words herself?
Hymns
A swan lends its name to Little Swan, the white goat stabled beside brown Little Bear. Heidi asks what they are called on her very first evening, then wishes each one goodnight by name.
Q 14Heidi is a pet form of which given name, used in full only by the strict housekeeper in the novel?
Adelheid
Adelheid was also her late mother's name, and the housekeeper insists a nickname is no Christian name for a child. Some English editions print the name as Adelaide.
Q 15Where does Heidi choose to sleep on her first night in grandfather's hut, beneath a little round window?
In the hayloft
In the hayloft she heaps up fresh, sweet-smelling hay for a mattress. Through the round window beside it she can look straight down the valley.
Q 16What does grandfather toast golden on a long iron fork for Heidi's first meal at the hut?
Cheese
Cheese toasted until soft as butter is her first meal there, spread on a thick slice and washed down with milk. She drains the bowl without stopping and says she never drank any so good.
Q 17Heidi was written by a Zürich author in which of Switzerland's four national languages?
German
German was the language of all her books, and Heidi first went on sale from a publisher in the town of Gotha. An English edition followed as early as 1882.
Q 18Which future co-founder of Studio Ghibli directed the 1974 anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps?
Isao Takahata
Isao Takahata travelled to the Alps to study the real setting first, taking along a young Hayao Miyazaki, who handled scene design and layout on the series.
Q 19What is the surname of the strict Fräulein who runs Clara's household in Heidi and is terrified of animals?
Rottenmeier
Rottenmeier is in charge because Clara's mother is dead and her father is usually away on business. In some English editions she is plain Miss Rottenmeier.
Q 20Which Bible story does Heidi read to her grandfather, moving the bitter old man to pray for the first time in years?
The Prodigal Son
The Prodigal Son, about a wanderer welcomed home by his father, echoes the old man's own squandered youth. The next morning he walks down to church with Heidi.
Hymns from the old woman's own book are what she most longs to hear again. Heidi had only just learned to read in the city, and the verses become her daily gift.
Q 24Which trees stand behind grandfather's hut in Heidi, roaring in the wind that the girl loves to hear?
Firs
Firs, three of them with long unlopped branches, stand behind the hut. On her first day Heidi stops beneath them just to listen to the rushing in their topmost branches.
Q 25Which real Swiss town, known for its wine as well as its link to Heidi, is the setting of the novel?
Maienfeld
Maienfeld lies on a key route through the Rhine valley. A nearby hamlet, once called Oberrofels, was renamed after the heroine for visiting fans.
Q 26Heidi is set in which Swiss canton, the country's largest and the only one with three official languages?
Graubünden
Graubünden, also called Grisons, is where the author spent several childhood holidays, near its capital Chur. It is the only canton where Romansh has official status.
Q 27In the 2015 film Heidi, Clara's grandmother gives the girl a notebook to encourage which ambition?
To be a writer
To be a writer is her dream by the film's final scenes. In the novel the same grandmother's present is a picture book, promised for the day Heidi can read it.
Q 28What does grandfather finally let Heidi do in the 2015 film, buying a winter home in the village for the purpose?
Go to school
Go to school is what she had longed to do while watching the village children. Wintering below the snowline, instead of up at the hut, makes the daily trip possible.
Q 29Which composer, years before his blockbuster film scores, wrote the music for the 1968 television film of Heidi?
John Williams
John Williams scored the film years before Jaws and Star Wars made him a household name. The cast he wrote for included Michael Redgrave and Jean Simmons.
Q 30Jennifer Edwards, who played Heidi on American television in 1968, is the stepdaughter of which musical star?
Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews married Jennifer's father, the film-maker Blake Edwards. Jennifer later co-wrote a television film with him, but Heidi remained her best-known role.