Barbara Heller (1)

I will admit it: I had never read Anne of Green Gables before. I have seen the different television series. I have read about the author in a Smithsonian Magazine article. I am creating a quilt of classic children’s writers and L. M. Montgomery is on it. It was about time I rectified my omission!

Anne of Green Gables is about an orphan girl taken in by an older brother and sister living on Prince Edward Island in Canada, changing their lives for the better.

I was delighted to discover the show more book is hilarious, heart warming, and quite forward thinking. Yes, it promotes 19th c Christian values. Anne’s antics and michiefs result in lessons learned.

I’ve learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes and each mistake has helped cure me of some shortcoming. Anne in Anne of Green Gables

This quote makes me think of advice told to my son: Make all the mistakes you can; you learn from mistakes. Perhaps Anne’s mistakes warned readers, but the novel also offers understanding that our mistakes don’t define us.

Marilla, unmarried, uptight, and strict, mellows as she see that Anne means well and has a good heart. She just needs time to grow up. Her vivid imagination distracts her from her duties. She even indulges in novel reading! Marilla was raised in a time when women’s reading novels was frowned upon.

Anne makes a bosom buddy and reading about their make believe play acting brought back warm memories of my own best friend and our own play. (We were orphans living in Scotland, riding horses and solving mysteries!)

Marilla supports Anne’s educational aspirations. “I believe in a girl being fitted to earn her own living whether she ever had to or not,” Marilla explains. Anne later states that women would make good ministers. Such radical notions!

Montgomery’s writing about the land and seasons is beautiful.

The novel’s bulk is about Anne’s childhood, but we see her mature in the end. She loses her champion, Marilla’s brother. She forgives a boy who once teased her. She gives up a dream, taking on responsibility to care for Marilla as she was cared for. She is a young adult.

This edition of the novel includes inserts, ephemera representing items from the novel that help bring Anne’s world alive. A map, period reproductions of print items, recipes, notes and letters, a greeting card, programs, and the ‘pass list’ for the Normal school. These were not included in the egalley I read, only the descriptions. I am sure that they would make this edition special.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley. show less