5-year-old receives letter from Queen Elizabeth II the day after the queen’s death

Getting a letter in the mail isn’t as common as it used to be, but getting a letter from Queen Elizabeth II is even rarer.

Over the summer, a 5-year-old girl wrote a letter to the queen after the queen’s jubilee, and to her shock, she got a response.

It started out as a simple letter.

“To Queen Elizabeth, thank you for being our queen for 70 years. I hope you enjoyed your jubilee. Love from Hallie,” said Hallie Boutwell, reciting the letter she sent to the queen.

That simple letter turned into something special for Hallie. Just one day after Queen Elizabeth’s death, Hallie received a letter of her own from the queen herself.

“It was like very special to me at once I saw it,” said Hallie.

Her mother, Laura Johnson, who has taught Hallie everything she knows about the royal family, never imagined she’d be blessed with such a special piece of history.

“I was completely in shock. I just couldn’t believe that. First of all, that we’d received a letter back, and to receive it the day after the news, it wasn’t even 24 hours,” said Johnson.

The shock didn’t stay just in the U.K. Hallie’s grandmother Cindy Gould lives in Southwest Florida. She said Hallie’s admiration for the royal family has always been strong.

“In school, the teachers made such a big deal about the jubilee and the balloons and the festivity and the queen. The kids really understand it, you know, at that age, to be brought up for respect and love and honor,” said Gould.

But now, it’s a love she’ll hold even stronger for the rest of her life.

“I think that a lot of girls they’re always looking at the queen’s and the princesses were always reading the fairy tales, and then to have it come through, in reality, is just like, unbelievably cool,” Gould said.