"A Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden": A Double-Feature Review

“I’ve often thought,” said Sara, in her reflecting voice, “that I should like to be a princess; I wonder what it feels like.  I believe I will begin pretending I am one.”

~ A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Chapter V. Becky

If it seems that the children’s novels I’ve been recommending have a similar tone—that of overactive imaginations, spunky orphan girls, etc.—I assure you that this pattern has only just now occurred to me as I’ve been making them. The truth is these are the classic children’s novels I loved as a girl, and if I loved them—before all my English Literature courses in college or reading all the documentations on how to classify and analyze and critique literature, back when I enjoyed it with a naïve enthusiasm that children tend to have for stories—then I’m sure other people will love them.

Maybe these books have been recommended to death. Maybe what I say about them is nothing new under the sun. Oh well. Nowadays for every plug for A Little Princess there’s five reviews of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It’s all well and good for new books to be brought to readers’ attention. But it’s also good to remind them of the “golden oldies,” as it were. And that’s what I’m going to do today.

Cover Fail: Anne of Green Gables

Source:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Entertainment/ht_anne_of_green_gables_ll_130207_vblog.jpg

This is the story of blond, attractive, self-assured, and plaid-bedecked Anne Shirley as she graduates college and moves into a trendy coed dorm after conning her way into the lives of two loser farmers and forming a cheerleader clique with Diana and regularly pushing resident nerd Gilbert Blythe into his locker.

At least that’s what I get from this cover.

"Anne of Green Gables": A Review

“They were on the crest of a hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long, gently rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one to another the child’s eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise.”

~ Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Chapter 2: Matthew Cuthbert is Surprised

Anne of Green Gables is the first in a series of nearly a dozen novels and short story collections which first made Lucy Maud Montgomery famous and later drove her crazy. Like Arthur Conan Doyle with his creation of Sherlock Holmes, the Anne Shirley character was so beloved by her audience that she soon took on a life of her own, and Montgomery was stuck writing stories for her ad nauseam. It’s pretty clear from Montgomery’s tone in the later books that the creator was sick of her creation, and though she didn’t throw Anne Shirley off the Reichenbach falls, one can’t help suspecting Montgomery was sorely tempted.