"Little Orphant Annie" is an 1885 poem written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The subject was inspired by Mary Alice "Allie" Smith, an orphan living in the Riley home during her childhood.

The underlying moral and warning is announced in the final stanza, telling children that they should obey their parents and be kind to the unfortunate, lest they suffer the same fate.

James Whitcomb Riley was a poet who achieved national fame in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Mary's uncle, a John Rittenhouse, came to Union County and took the young orphan to his home in Greenfield where he "dressed her in black" and "bound her out to earn her board and keep".

In it, Mary Alice arrives at her benefactor family's home and wastes no time before telling the children a grisly story of murder by decapitation and then later introduces them to her soldier friend Dave who is soon killed upon going off to war.

Riley at first contacted the printing house to have the error corrected, but decided to keep the misprint because of the poem's growing popularity.

Riley dedicated his poem "to all the little ones," which served as an introduction to draw the attention of his audience when read aloud.

The alliteration, parallels, phonetic intensifiers and onomatopoeia add effects to the rhymes that become more detectable when read aloud.

It begins by introducing Annie, and then sets a mood of excitement by describing the children eagerly gathering to hear her stories.

Each story tells of a bad child who is snatched away by goblins and has an underlying moral which is announced in the final stanza, encouraging children to obey their parents and teachers, help their loved ones, and care for the poor and disadvantaged.

[17] A short animated film based on the poem was released by Soyuztelefilm studio in Russia in 1992, directed by Yulian Kalisher.