Anne of Avonlea

Anne of Avonlea is the 1909 follow-up to Anne of Green Gables, and it picks up Anne at sixteen as she begins teaching school in her own village. Matthew is gone. Marilla is raising the orphaned Davy and Dora Keith with Anne’s help. Gilbert Blythe is teaching at the next school over, and the early friendship is finally becoming something more, though Anne herself does not entirely see it yet.

The book is gentler than the first one. The hijinks are mostly other people’s children now. There is a wonderful sequence with the Cope siblings and an inadequate stove pipe. There is the formation of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, which mostly results in things being painted increasingly poorly. There is the small heartbreak of the Pringles, a powerful local family who refuse to accept Anne until she wins them over. Montgomery uses the smaller scope to deepen her sense of place. Prince Edward Island is at the center of the book, and many readers come away wanting to actually visit Avonlea, which the island has cheerfully turned into a tourism industry. A pleasure to read directly after Green Gables.