[ book tip by Ann Morgan ] This is the book that made me who I am. Literally. After reading it at the age of eight, sitting up until the small hours, until my mother had to come in and switch off my bedside lamp and remove the book from where it had fallen across my face, I knew that I would go to university and probably that I would be a writer too.  

I am not alone in my obsession. LM Montgomery’s story of the red-headed orphan girl who is billeted mistakenly to a homestead on Canada’s Prince Edward Island has tugged heart-strings around the world since it was first published in 1908. So much so, in fact, that to this day boatloads of Japanese tourists sporting ginger wigs pile onto the island just off the east coast of North America to have their photos taken at the house thought to have been the model for Green Gables and even, some of them, to get married there.  

Re-visiting the book as an adult, much like visiting the house, is perhaps something of a disappointment. But perhaps this is because the book is such a successful springboard for the childish imagination. Lovingly delineating the power of daydreams in the young mind, the story of the young Anne (and yes, I spelled my name with an ‘e’ for a good long while after reading it as well) kindles the imagination, encouraging the reader’s thoughts to roam far beyond the pages of the book, to take Montgomery’s simple tale and embroider it with imaginings of his or her own. The result is a heady and never-to-be-forgotten experience: a book which you should buy for any little girls you know, but which, sadly, adults should probably leave well alone.   

[ book info ] Montgomery, Lucy Maud: Anne of Green Gables. (Book language: English)