Product Description

Nestled between the ocean and the hills of Prince Edward Island is a road that leads to the house where a girl named Anne grew up, Green Gables, and to the wonderful place called Avonlea. In this second volume of heartwarming tales a Persian cat plays an astonishing part in a marriage proposal . . . a ghostly appearance in a garden leads a woman to the fulfillment of her youthful dreams . . . a young girl risks losing her mother to find the father she never knew . . . and a foolish lie threatens to make an unattached woman the town's laughingstock when an imaginary lover comes to town for real! Filled with warmth, humor, and mystery, these unforgettable stories re-create the enchanting world of Avonlea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64382 in Books
• Published on: 1989-10-01
• Released on: 1989-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 208 pages

From the Publisher
Nestled between the ocean and the hills of Prince Edward Island is a road that leads to the house where a girl named Anne grew up, Green Gables, and to the wonderful place called Avonlea. In this second volume of heartwarming tales a Persian cat plays an astonishing part in a marriage proposal . . . a ghostly appearance in a garden leads a woman to the fulfillment of her youthful dreams . . . a young girl risks losing her mother to find the father she never knew . . . and a foolish lie threatens to make an unattached woman the town's laughingstock when an imaginary lover comes to town for real! Filled with warmth, humor, and mystery, these unforgettable stories re-create the enchanting world of Avonlea.

From the Inside Flap
Nestled between the ocean and the hills of Prince Edward Island is a road that leads to the house where a girl named Anne grew up, Green Gables, and to the wonderful place called Avonlea. In this second volume of heartwarming tales a Persian cat plays an astonishing part in a marriage proposal . . . a ghostly appearance in a garden leads a woman to the fulfillment of her youthful dreams . . . a young girl risks losing her mother to find the father she never knew . . . and a foolish lie threatens to make an unattached woman the town's laughingstock when an imaginary lover comes to town for real! Filled with warmth, humor, and mystery, these unforgettable stories re-create the enchanting world of Avonlea.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable.
This is a rather nice collection of short stories, if you're already a L.M. Montgomery fan, you will enjoy this. I know I did.

A short story collection that LM Montgomery didn't want
Apparently, L.M. Montgomery did not want this collection of short stories to be published. Her publisher compiled a collection of stories that she rejected from inclusion into the Chronicles of Avonlea, and published this. (She sued them for this.)

I think that it's interesting to read this collection in light of that. Some of the stories are the gentle, sweet ones we've come to expect from the author, while others are glaringly not. The last story has already been mentioned as being hopelessly racist and out of date. However I think that it should not be censored out of any future edition of this book (as has been suggested) because it is a reflection of its times. As a matter of fact, there are traces of Canada's racist attitudes of the time in LM Montgomery's more famous works too - even in the Anne of Green Gables series, where short but pointed bits of racism towards French Canadians appear. (In the 1985 TV mini-series, the story is given a modern update of sorts when the neighbor who offers to buy the Cuthberts' farm is a French Canadian; that would probably have been unthinkable in real turn of the last century Prince Edward Island.)

While these things can jar modern sensibilities, they shouldn't be censored because they are a part of history. I suppose people who want to ban Huckleberry Finn from school curriculums might have a problem with the racism in any book, especially one for children or young adults, but how are we to learn from our past mistakes if we don't know about them?

Beyond the racist last story, the other stories are perhaps of a lesser quality than the ones in Chronicles with some exceptions, but are worth reading nevertheless.

That last story is a problem...
This book, which sort of follows the Anne of Green Gables series (and sort of doesn't connect to it) contains the following short stories:

Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat
The Materializing of Cecil
Her Father's Daughter
Jane's Baby
The Dream-Child
The Brother Who Failed
The Return of Hester
The Little Brown Book of Miss Emily
Sara's Way
The Son of His Mother
The Education of Betty
In Her Selfless Mood
The Conscience Case of David Bell
Only a Common Fellow
Tannis of the Flats

Several were funny and light-hearted, but my favorite was the tender, loving short story, "The Brother Who Failed." In the end, you realize that there are other paths to success beyond the accumulation of worldly wealth, and that we are all capable of doing something to help another person -- even if we don't have a lot of money.

I didn't care for "In Her Selfless Mood," a study in co-dependence and thwarted growth.

I particularly didn't like the last story, which is so gratuitously and overtly racist as to deserve losing its place in elementary school libraries. I realize that this is strong censure, but I believe that it earns it with its stereotypical depictions of slovenly, ugly, vicious, scheming Native Americans and biracial people. It would be an act of mercy for the publisher to produce a library edition which omits the final story.

(While it will not find space on my own bookshelves, my free-speech tendencies prevent me from having very serious objections to keeping it in public libraries, or in upper grades. In the one case I hope for more direct parental supervision [compared to zero parental involvement in the school library], and in the other, I hope that more experienced readers will recognize the racism for the nonsense that it is.)

If you like the LM Montgomery's writing style and want to introduce a younger child to some of her shorter works, then let me suggest that you get this book -- and then read it aloud, so you can skip anything that YOU decide is inappropriate for your child.