Anne of Avonlea

by L.M. Montgomery

What a delightful book. I was a bit worried that after Anne finished school (in Anne of Green Gables) the series would loose some of its magic. Not so. Although I missed Matthew, the addition of the twins was fun. Davy is definitely a kindred spirit for Anne.

I used lots of bookdarts in this book. I'll probably use a dozen more when I reread it. Here are some of the ones I marked:

"We make our own lives wherever we are, after all. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out." --Mrs. Allan

"I wish you could think first and do things afterwards, 'cause then you wouldn't do them." --Davy

"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string." --Anne

"That is one good thing about this world . . . there are always sure to be more springs." --Anne

Charlotta the Fourth admired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that she though her so very handsom. Diana Barry's beauty of crimson cheek and black curls was much more to Charlotta the Fourth's taste than moonshine charm of luminous gray eyes and the pale, ever changing roses of her cheeks.
"But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely.
Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute and cast away the sting. She was used to taking her compliments mixed. . . . Anne herself would never believe that she had any claim to beauty. When she looked in the glass all she saw was a little pale face with seven freckles on the nose thereof. Her mirror never revealed to her the elusive, ever-varying play of feeling that came and went over her features like a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of dream and laughter alternating in her big eyes.

"Now where is the romance in all that?" asked Marilla.
"Oh, there isn't any, when you put it that way," gasped Anne, rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her. "I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry . . . and I think it's nicer."
Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from further sarcastic comments. Perhaps some realization came to her that after all it was better to have, like Anne, "the vision and the faculty divine" . . . that gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at life through some transfiguring . . . or revealing? . . . medium, whereby everything seemed appareled in celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to those who, like herself and Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things only through prose.

Anne of Avonlea was published in 1909 - the year my grandmother would have turned ten, almost 100 years ago! It's story is still as fresh and mood-altering today.

A big THANK-YOU to Raidergirl3 who presented me with my copy of Anne of Avonlea when we visited last summer in the PEI. Every I picked up or laid the book down I would be flooded by those memories in the Pub, our good visit, and the bagpipes marching by. Delightful evening!