Anne, Adapted
My Canadian friend Leslie gifted Laurel with a copy of Anne of Green Gables a couple of years ago. Given that Laurel loves chapter books with female central characters, we've been looking forward to reading Anne together but the language is still a little too advanced (Amazon lists the series for ages 9 and up). I subsequently was thrilled to find an adapted version of Anne of Green Gables in a box of hand me downs from my sister-in-law Estelle.
Perfect for avid young readers who also still love picture books, Laurel and I loved reading this book together. Although Laurel was initially a bit rattled at the beginning -- by the idea that Anne might be sent away for being a girl -- as the story developed, she was clearly captivated by Anne's strength, sauciness, and sensitivity. Laurel has already said she can't wait to read the original book and all the subsequent Anne stories. Meanwhile, I'm going to see if we can track down other adaptations of later books in the series.
One shopping note: The adapted Anne of Green Gables I found on Amazon has a different cover and publishing date (off by a year) than the copy I have, but shares the same contributor list for author (L. M. Montgomery), adapter (Margaret DeKeyser), and illustrator (Jerry Dillingham), as well as the same approximate page count and publisher (Dalmation Press). After poking around quite a bit on Amazon, I'm pretty confident that this is the same version I have. Enjoy!
Comments
Love the idea of making great stories like Anne of Green Gables accessible to a wider range of ages!
One nit-picky comment completely unrelated to the content of the post: is there any reason to use "gifted" instead of "gave"? I'm a bit befuddled by how "gift" has changed from a noun to a verb in our culture -- and wonder at the subtle implications when we talk about "gifting" instead of "giving". "Gifting" certainly feels much more materialistic to me. You can, after all, "give" any range of things (love, attention, presents) but you can only "gift" things that are material. ....Okay, stepping off my soapbox now!
Posted by: J | January 12, 2012 1:30 PM | Reply to this comment
I'm also Canadian and grew up with Anne of Green Gables. I love the books but also highly recommend the movies with Megan Follow. They were made for TV and occasionally have aired on PBS. I have also purchased the DVDs online. I'm not a big fan of TV but these were so well done I can't wait till my daughter is old enough to watch them with me!
Posted by: SG | January 13, 2012 11:26 AM | Reply to this comment