The Green Gables Reunion

This post is a celebration of Anne – the Anne that we all know as our own best friend in ways individual to our reading experience.  I write this as a welcome to the grown up Anne, to the next leg of my life journey.

Your first experience of reading Anne of Green Gables is one of the most significant and memorable experiences of your life.  I have only to momentarily think about it before I swoon in a cloud of joy and sentimentality.  My memories of Anne are entwined with all the good things of my childhood – my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my father, my first ever birthday present, my first book, my first proper grown-up chapter book, my first taste of classic literature. 

My copy of Anne of Green Gables was a present from my aunty, given to me the day after I was born.  All throughout my early childhood, I tried and failed to read it, continuously asking Mum to read me the first little bit to see if I could understand it yet.  When I finally did, I digested it, absorbed it, took its heart and processed it through my system.  Anne is integral to my being. 

For a long time, I never read any of the other books.  I was a stubborn reader.  As a child, and even now to some extent, I boycotted things for the sake of being loyal to the original – I never watched the Eddie Murphy Doctor Doolittle movies because it was slanderous to the Hugh Lofting books.  I was also convinced that if I read the rest of the Anne series, I would destroy the pure and untainted sanctity of the first, that reading more would destroy the perfection of what I had read.  Which was fine for a while, but then I began to crave more.  I had grown up, and now I was ready to meet the grown up Anne.  It was a coming-of-age thing. 

However, I wanted my own copy, and I really couldn’t bear the idea of reading the abridged version, so I toiled long and hard searching for the beautiful, hardback Cornstalk edition. 

On Tuesday, the 4^th of September, I found it. 

This post is a celebration of Anne – the Anne that we all know as our own best friend in ways individual to our reading experience.  I write this as a welcome to the grown up Anne, to the next leg of my life journey.