Anne of Green Gables. Jr. ed.

Linda Perry is a senior policy analyst at the Ontario Ministry of
Colleges and Universities.

This is an abridgment of the famous Anne book, a sort of junior
Reader’s Digest version. It appeals, if at all, to girls in late
childhood and early teens. The question is, why produce a shorter
version when surely one of the best things about the huge originals was
their length? Readers who love the Anne books are sorry when they are
finished, and dawdle through the last few chapters to make them last.

Perhaps there is a fast-lane, fast-food, fast-read rationale. The
leisure of a lengthy printed message may seem tedious compared with the
instant immediacy of 10-second commercials. This version provides an
Anne story, minus the detail and richness, in a Nancy Drew-type,
quick-plot format.

The book is a period piece and it is dated. The television series,
however, may have sparked a renewed interest in the characters,
traditional values, old-fashioned manners, and pace of the Anne stories.

As one who, years ago, avidly devoured everything L.M. Montgomery ever
wrote, I would have wished for more, not less. Rather, as with Gone with
the Wind, couldn’t Greenwood have turned her talents to producing an
updated sequel?