The Anne Books

Last night we reached an ending. A satisfying conclusion. Yet bittersweet.

The end of the series. You see, we’ve been reading through the “Anne of Green Gables” books.

When our girls were little, I did SO MUCH reading out loud. We loved it. Or mostly. At one point in time, when I had three daughters, ages 3 and under, it felt like I spent more time reading to them than doing anything else. When I’d sit down to hold my baby, I’d have the other two sit on either side of me, and I’d read books to them. Mostly to keep them out of mischief. 😉 Also as a way for me to share my love of reading with them. We read through many books that year….

Then we home-schooled for three years. During those years, I also read many, many stories to them. After they all went back to school, my life changed tremendously. It was a whole new chapter in life. So, for a few years, I hardly read any books to them anymore.

Then, last year, I asked them if they’d want me to read a story to them. Deep down, I’ve always had this desire to share my love of  my “Anne books” with them. When our oldest daughter was younger, I  began reading the first book out loud to her, but she lost interest fairly quickly (I don’t remember if we even made it through that one). And what I really wanted was to be able to share the entire series with them!

And now, our two youngest daughters are just about the perfect ages for these stories—9 and 12. Old enough to ‘get’ the humor and other things that younger ones don’t understand. And yet, still young enough to love having stories read out loud to them!

So, we’ve been sitting down most evenings, just before they go to bed, and I’d read a chapter or two to them. I wish I could remember when exactly we started, I’m pretty sure it’s been over a year! At the beginning, we looked at alllll those books and wondered if it would even be possible to get through them all. (Way too often, I start out with good intentions, planning to read to them every evening, but then things happen, and we forget about the story, and then we kind of just leave it.) Well, this series kept their attention.

And yes, last night, we read the very last chapter of the very last book, Rilla of Ingleside. We’ve read and learned about so many things through those pages. (2,097 pages to be exact!! No wonder it felt like a lot!) I find it so refreshing to read about life back in the day. Everything seems a bit more uncomplicated. More down to earth. And yet, the issues people faced back then are some of the very same things we face today. So, even though I don’t really consider the Anne books to be Christian, there are so many valuable and worthwhile life lessons to be learned therein.

These books have been on my shelves for a long time. I got the first one as a Summer Reading Program prize from a library, back when I was…oh…about in fifth grade. After I had the first one, I’d keep adding to my collection until I had them all. Even then, they weren’t necessarily the most exciting books I’d read…and they still aren’t. But they are enduring, and classic. And just different from the new books of today…

 

Have you read this series? (and if you’ve watched the movies, well, I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t really count. 😉 I always hate watching movies of books that I really like, because they just don’t do them justice. I’d love to see movies made that stay true to the story lines in the books…) If you haven’t, may I suggest you give them a try?!

If you are a lover of the Anne books, tell me your favorite scene.

And…any suggestions to other good books we can read aloud together? (Besides the Little House books — we’ve already read those). Thanks in advance! 🙂