I re-read this too in anticipation of visiting Prince Edward Island. I’d forgotten what was actually in the book and what was just in the Megan Follows movie version… this is quite different, as it seems the movie “Anne of Avonlea” encompasses this book, plus “Anne of the Island.”
This book is just as episodic as the first, but unlike the film, the majority of it does still take place in Avonlea. This is the book where, after Anne returns from Queens and wins the Avery scholarship, she decides to give it up in order to stay with Marilla after Matthew’s death, because Marilla’s eyesight is declining. Marilla also adopts a pair of twins, Dora and Davey, which doesn’t happen in the film at all–and Anne mostly helps with raising the mischievous Davey, since Dora never gets into any trouble at all. Anne meanwhile takes the school in Avonlea, while Gilbert (to whom she is now speaking, though she’s largely oblivious to his feelings for her) gives up that school so that he takes the one in Carmandy instead, so that she can stay at Green Gables with Marilla. She and Gilbert, who also doesn’t go straight to college for financial reasons, continue their studies together by correspondence, and they also start an Avonlea improvement club, which gives them lots of reasons to continue interacting with one another as friends.
Anne’s favorite pupil is a boy named Paul, who is Anne in miniature, with his vivid imagination and inherent goodness. His mother died, and his father is away… but then Anne comes across Miss Lavender, a middle-aged spinster who once had a tragic romance with Paul’s father. Anne gets to participate in reuniting them, and this foreshadows the trajectory of her own relationship with Gilbert.
Neither the twins, nor Paul, Miss Lavender, or most of the other characters unique to this book appear in the film, but it’s still a fun read, and it has all the feel of ‘living’ in Avonlea that I loved about the first book.
My rating: *****
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none
Political content: none
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