Happy 100th Birthday: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

It has indeed been 100 years since the publication of Anne of Green Gables. In the tough business of children's literature, staying in print continuously for a century, through a time of massive social change for girls and women, is quite a testimony to the staying power of this work of fiction.

This longevity raises an interesting literary question. Should this novel now be viewed as "historical fiction," even though it was published in 1908, only two years after it was written as a portrait of what was then a "thoroughly modern Millie" of a young girl. Now, however, looking back at her world we realize that Anne Shirley actually was a contemporary of the beloved and also orphaned Samantha Pennington of American Girl fame. Yet, the portrait of a highly verbal and feisty red-haired eleven year old whose spirit and imagination change the lives of her foster parents and touch those of everyone around her still strikes a chord with girls generations (and light years) removed from the book's first readers. Although the social milieu for the girls and women of Avonlea may seem historical, Anne's spirit is instantly recognizable to girls today.

For girls who have devoured the An American Girl series and not yet moved on to Little Women (Unabridged Classics), a visit with that Canadian red head can make for some happy summer reading. The first book is the best known, but Lucy Montgomery was pressed by her fans to write an abundance of sequels, available as The Complete Anne of Green Gables Boxed Set (Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House of Dreams, ... Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside)

Under the Christmas Tree--Last Minute Gifts: Boxed Sets They'll Love

Here are some kid-pleasing book sets with proven track records. They're even easy to wrap as gifts--small, lightweight, and already boxed. Here are some for almost every reading taste.

BEGINNING CHAPTER BOOKS
(Grades 1-4, Reading Levels 2-4)

The Judy Moody Star-Studded Collection: Judy Moody Saves the World!/Judy Moody Gets Famous!/Judy Moody Judy Moody's first day in third grade finds her a bit fearful, but Mr. Todd lets her inimitable style shine forth, and as the year goes on, Judy Moody makes a name for herself, takes on saving the environment as her science project, and finds herself in the mood for school.



In addition to the star-studded collection, The Judy Moody Totally Awesome Collection (Judy Moody) includes three more titles--Judy Moody Declares Independence, Judy Moody, M.D.: The Doctor Is In, and Judy Moody Predicts the Future.


Three average third grade guys have a problem: they keep getting whisked back in time (or even into the future to rescue their grandchildren) in a hilarious series with plenty of historical fun in the Time Warp Trio Gift Set, Books 1-4 (Knights of the Kitchen Table; The Not-So-Jolly Rodger; The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy; Your Mother Was a Neanderthal)



Two-time Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo has a winner of a heroine in pet pig Mercy Watson, who appears in this Mercy Watson: Three-Treat Collection: Slipcased Gift Set (Mercy Watson) in three hilarious books: Mercy Watson to the Rescue, Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride, and Mercy Watson Fights Crime.

MIDDLE READERS (Grades 3-6;)

Gloriously silly and beloved of third and fourth graders, Dav Pilkey proves he's the humormeister of elementary school in The New Captain Underpants Collection: Box Set (Books 1-5), along with its companion set The Second Captain Underpants Collection: Books 5-7 & Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.



Judy Blume's Fudge Box Set includes the complete story of Peter Hatcher, his little brother Fudge, and Peter's rival Sheila Tubman, including Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Fudge-A-Mania, and Double Fudge.


The 1974 adventures of the latest historical character in the mega-popular American Girl series, Julie: An American Girl (American Girls Collection), includes six novels (Meet Julie; Julie Tells Her Story; Happy New Year, Julie; Julie and the Eagles; Julie's Journey; and Changes for Julie) featuring the newest American Girl, who encounters divorce between her parents, women's lib and Title IX, and the turmoil and promise of growing up in San Francisco in the 1970's.


The Little House Collection Box Set (Full Color) (Little House) includes the first five of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, On the Shores of Silver Lake, and Farmer Boy, with Garth Williams' famous illustrations in full color.



For fantasy readers in Grades 4-5 especially, here are the first five novels in the popular The Spiderwick Chronicles (Boxed Set): The Field Guide; The Seeing Stone; Lucinda's Secret; The Ironwood Tree; The Wrath of Mulgrath series by Toni diTerlizzi.




Actually five novels and one fictionalized biography, Six Favorite Novels for Girls: Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Story of Pocahantas, A Little Princess, Little Women and Heidi has the classic "girl" novels from the last century, must-reads for all!



Despite its somewhat smarmy name, Charming Classics Box Set #3: Charming Horse Library (Charming Classics) has those must-have classic horse novels Black Beauty, National Velvet, and My Friend Flicka. (Note: Hollywood movies to the contrary, Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka have male main characters!)



There's no better-known author of novels about horses than Newbery Award author Marguerite Henry. The Marguerite Henry Treasury of Horses (Boxed Set): Misty of Chincoteague, Justin Morgan Had a Horse, King of the Wind brings together three favorites.


If you know a child who hasn't yet read (or had read to him or her) a Harry Potter book, Harry Potter Paperback Boxed Set (Books 1-5) can be the start of a lifetime reading experience! Not only does he banish evil wizards; Harry has the power to turn average kids into avid readers--and that makes us all merry!

Heading Home: Carolina Harmony by Marilyn Taylor McDowell

Carolina reached up and felt the wood carving she wore as a pendant. She rubbed her finger over its wings and its tail, feeling where he daddy had made the cuts and where he'd sanded it smooth.

"It's a present for you, Carolina.
It's a catbird, case you couldn't tell."

She remembered that clear June night, when they were camping up near Grandfather Mountain.

"Lift your hair so I can tie a knot in the cord."

She remembered leaning into the crook of his shoulder and gazing into the night sky with the campfire crackling and blazing before them.

Fans of Anne of Green Gables, that classic tale of a red-headed, pigtailed orphan girl which celebrated its centennial last year, have a new novel of an extraordinary red-haired orphan to enjoy, in Marylyn Taylor McDowell's recent Carolina Harmony (Delacorte, 2009).

When Carolina Campbell's parents and baby brother Caleb are suddenly killed in a car accident, she moves in with her dad's foster mother, "Auntie Shen," (so called after her baby pronunciation of the Gaelic seanmhair for grandmother.) It's 1964, but life in the high mountains of western North Carolina is still primitive for that time. Auntie Shen supports them with cash from her her wild berry jams and jellies and her paintings of mountain plants and animals sold at her Morning Glory Jelly Stand. Although memories and dreams of her lost family haunt Carolina, Auntie Shen's stories of her father's boyhood and frequent "I just love ya, girl!" give her a feeling of continuity and security.

But when Auntie Shen has a stroke and is moved to a nursing home, Carolina learns what being an orphan really means. Taken away from the care of Auntie Shen's Black friend Ruby to "be with people of your own kind," Carolina is sent first to an unkind and autocratic minister's family. When Carolina runs away, she is found and moved to Boone to stay with Miss Lily Jean, a woman motivated mostly by the money she gets for fostering children. Athough befriended by Lily Jean's mischievous nephew, Russell, Carolina is frightened by her trucker husband and once more flees to the woods, finally making her way to Harmony Farm, where she is quietly taken in by Ray and Latah and their son Luke. A wonderful summer passes in which Carolina feels that she has found a family who will keep her and love her for all time.

But when Russell turns up with his Uncle Sims, come to shear the sheep at Harmony Farm, he tries to convince Carolina that Ray and Latah only keep her for her work on the farm. When Sims carelessly sets the barn on fire, Carolina is afraid that she will be blamed and, fearing that she has lost her family all over again, stows away with Russell aboard a freight train heading for Tennessee.

Strong and unique characters, a strong sense of time and place, and plenty of orphan-style adventure make this novel both a sensitive and suspenseful story. Carolina is more than lucky in her many rescuers, from the grandmotherly Ruby to the soft-hearted Knoxville beauty school student Georgia, who sweet-talks her sheriff's deputy boyfriend into giving Carolina a second chance at Harmony Farm. A bit of an old-fashioned tale of a 1960s "Annie," Carolina Harmony is an engaging story of a resourceful orphan who finally comes home to stay.

'Tis the Blight that Man Was Born For: The Question of Miracles by Elana K. Arnold

Back home in California, no one ever ate lunch indoors--lunchtime was a strictly outdoor activity. It was humane. There was room to breathe.

But that was back home. Here in Oregon, where it had rained literally every day since they'd parked the moving van, school lunch had to be consumed indoors.

It was another reason to hate it here. As if Iris didn't have a long enough list already.

And there was Sarah's ghost.

Iris's best friend Sarah had been killed back in California that summer, leaving the tennis courts, struck by a careening car that just missed Iris and hit Sarah right beside her. Sarah had always been her other half, the person with whom she shared everything, and Iris longs for her friend, who seems, not gone at all, but somehow just beyond her reach. The "fresh start" in Corvallis, with its interminable gray drizzle, the change that her parents hoped would help, wasn't working.

The new life is nothing like her old life, surrounded by friends. People in the middle school cafeteria stare at her standing with her tray in the middle of room alone, so Iris accepts the offer of a strange-looking boy with wild curly hair to sit with him at an empty table. Boris is clearly not one of the popular kids. His social skills reveal no concept of personal space, chewing and at the same time garrulously talking on and on about some game while Iris sits, gaze averted. But Boris is cheerful and invites her over to his house, and Iris reluctantly agrees, mostly from a lack of other options.

But Boris soon tells her his story. He survived to be born by what his parents feel was a real miracle, an internal deformity correcting itself as a group of nuns prayed to Pope John Paul, and he tells her that he'll soon be visited by a team from the Vatican, sent to determine if a miracle had actually occurred with his birth,

Iris is startled. If a doomed baby can be restored to health, perhaps a miracle which will allow her to reach Sarah's ghost could happen for her. Iris somehow comes to believe that Sarah's spirit is in their storage closet with her tennis racket, the one she was holding when she died. Secretly Iris visits the town psychic, and even agrees to search of traces of Sarah's spirit with Boris' audio equipment. On Sarah's birthday, Iris buys a copy of Anne of Green Gables, wraps it lovingly, and hides it in the closet behind the racket for Sarah. Then one night she hears a strange sound from downstairs.

Whatever it was, came from beneath her, not above.

Iris blinked into the hallway's darkness and felt her way to the banister, then down the steep staircase.

On the sixteenth step, Iris stopped. At last she heard the sound--it was a lament, a wail, a beseeching prayer.

It came from the the closet under the stairs.

"Sarah?" she whispered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight.

"Sarah, is that you?"

Iris closed her eyes and prayed. Give me a miracle.

Iris does not find the miracle she wants, but as time passes she begins to see that all of life is its own miracle, in Elana K. Arnold's just published The Question of Miracles (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). Dealing with deep grief is a difficult subject, especially for middle readers just beginning to deal with mortality--mortality of friends, parents, and finally everyone around them. Arnold's sensitive narrative builds tension as Iris comes closer to understanding her own loss and finding a way to find joy in life despite her grief. The chilly gray rain brings new life from the garden Iris and her dad plant in early spring, and Iris begins to heal from her loss, even as she struggles with the eternal question of why some live and some die. With its difficult theme, this is perhaps not a book for everyone, but there are few young readers who won't benefit from Arnold's gentle story of the passage through grief to life.

If Wishes Were Lobsters: Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord

Wishes are slippery things. You have to be very specific or you can get exactly what you wished for and still end up with nothing.

Tess Brooks has a whole collection of lucky pieces she packs in her pocket when she really needs to see her wishes come true, but Tess is a hard-headed island girl, daughter of a lobster fisherman, and she believes in doing whatever it takes to give good luck a nudge.

When the state of Maine threatens to close her island school because of its low student population, Tess, who fears moving from her beloved home and changing to a strange mainland school, is all behind her neighbors' plan to take in foster children to pad their count. When her family is assigned a 13-year-old boy who has been abandoned by his mother, left behind when his grandmother dies, and moved through several temporary placements, Tess knows that she's going to need all the luck she can get, and she believes she's found it in a beautiful piece of blue sea glass she finds as she waits for Aaron's arrival on the ferry.

But Aaron is not all she had wished for. As orphans go, as Tess puts it, she had hoped for a boy Anne of Green Gables and gotten a boy Great Gilly Hopkins. Aaron is depressed, uncommunicative, and makes no secret of the fact that he wishes he were back on the mainland where he could play his trumpet with his local jazz band. But Tess throws all her energy into making Aaron happy with her family, knowing that keeping him home with them is her way to hold on to her own island home.

Despite their initial conflict, Tess hits on a plan to make Aaron's music an entry into island life. Tess skillfully approaches an older neighbor who has been critical of the newcomer:

"Hi, Mrs. Varnay." I brush the paint dust off my clothes as I'm walking. "Isn't it great how Aaron plays the trumpet?"

"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Varnay replies, pulling out her knitting needles. "I feel lucky to hear such fine music from my front porch. The boy plays like an angel!"

"It's a shame the whole island hasn't had a chance to hear Aaron," I say. "And the trumpet is especially good for patriotic songs. Exciting marching music, like we might hear at Memorial Day or the Fourth of July picnic."

"There's nothing like a trumpet for patriotic songs," Mrs. Varnay agrees. "Where's my cell phone?" As she hunts through her basket, I back away, smiling.

My work is done.

With Mrs. Varnay behind the arrangements, Aaron's beautiful performance at the picnic on the Fourth is an island sensation, giving Tess has another brilliant idea. Knowing that Aaron longs to see his mother, forbidden to contact him by Child Welfare, Tess quietly writes to her, suggesting that she come as an incognito tourist to the annual island talent show to hear her son play. If Aaron can have hope of an occasional visit with his mom, Tess reasons, he'll be satisfied to stay with Tess's family until she is able to take him back.

But her scheme doesn't quite go as planned, and Tess learns that there is much more to good outcomes than making lucky wishes. Cynthia Lord's just published Touch Blue (Scholastic Press, 2010) is a wonderfully crafted novel, weaving a strong sense of place into a universal human story in this insightful tale of two young people both looking to hold onto what they love most in their lives. But we can't always control what happens in life despite our best efforts, Tess' father tells her:

"Will she take him away from us?" I asked.

"I don't know. We don't get to decide that," Dad says. "But we'll all go on, whatever comes. Sometimes you have to quit trying to control everything and let life happen the way it's supposed to, Tess. Even if it's not exactly the way you wanted."

"You and Aaron both have to let go of thinking 'I can only be happy if....' and find a way to carry your happiness inside you. We're all more than where we came from, Tess."

Cynthia Lord's previous book, Rules, was a recipient of the Newbery Honor Award and the Michigan Library Association's Mitten Award, an NCTE Notable Book and ALA Notable Book award, and her first novel has been nominated for dozens of state Children's Choice awards since its publication. In her newest, Lord shows that she continues to create honest and sensitive realistic fiction for middle readers.