by Lucy Maud Montgomery
320pp.
Shy, elderly bachelor Matthew Cuthbert and his prim spinster sister, Marilla Cuthbert live together in the fictional town of Avonlea, situated on the picturesque north shore of Canada's Prince Edward Island. The two submit a request to adopt a young boy who could work on the family farm, and in response are mistakenly sent a skinny, red-haired, freckled orphan named Anne Shirley.
Anne's wild imagination, incessant chatter, fiery temper, and rambunctious spirit ensure that she is the centre of a series of entertaining adventures. As she matures, nurtured by the love and discipline of Marilla and Matthew, she develops into an intelligent and independent young woman who harnesses her imagination constructively. Other important characters include her best friend, Diana Barry, class rival and eventual love interest, Gilbert Blythe, and town gossip, Mrs. Rachel Lynde. Anne is 11 at the novel's beginning and 16 at its end.
This book is so well-known and so well-loved that it might seem strange for us to offer it with a warning, but we do think there is one major problem with it: the glorification of Anne's romanticism, her notion that life is only worth living if it can be infused with dramatic significance that in the end is nothing but fantasy. If only the author had used the opportunity to show that Matthew and Marilla's plainness and steadfastness are by far the better way, this book might appear on our list of best books ever.
Still, even with this major flaw Anne of Green Gables is a very good book because of its major virtue—its unflinching portrayal of Anne's self-sacrificial loyalty to Matthew and Marilla. This quality is so deplorably absent in most fiction that we have to champion any book which features it. So we recommend this book as a readaloud, where the parents can continually remind the children that Anne's constant fantasizing is not something to be admired, and can share the joy when Anne's sense of duty triumphs.
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