Anne of Green Gables Paper Doll Book

Check out this wonderful Anne of Green Gables Paper Doll Book by Eileen Rudisill Miller that was published by Paper Studio Press in 2014. Miller is an illustrator and painter. You can visit her website and Etsy store to see more of her paper doll books, coloring books, and artwork.

The Anne of Green Gables Paper Doll Book includes two dressable figures: Anne Shirley and Anne's bosom friend, Diana Barry. The figures are 10 inches tall and include stands.


You can dress Anne Shirley and Diana Barry in 16 outfits from L.M. Montgomery's story, including several displayed below. The outfits include Anne and Diana's school clothes, play clothes, and dresses worn when picking flowers in Lover’s Lane. There's also Anne's first dress with puffed sleeves and the gowns Anne and Diana wore when visiting Miss Josephine Barry. Additionally, the book includes Anne and Diana's outfits for the recital at the White Sands Hotel (Anne wears the pearls Matthew gave her), their clothes worn when Anne left for Queen’s College, and dresses worn when Anne returned home to teach in Avonlea.


Image Credits:
Images from the Anne of Green Gables Paper Doll Book (2014) by Eileen Rudisill Miller.

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Created September 14, 2023. Last updated December 20, 2024.
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Bibliophile Pencil Set Featuring Anne of Green Gables

I keep running across Anne of Green Gables-themed items in bookstores lately. They seem to be everywhere. Last night, I saw this cool bibliophile pencil set featuring literary quotes by Chronicle Books. It features the art of Jane Mount. It's a set of ten pencils with the green one featuring a quote from Anne of Green Gables: "Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it yet."

The other nine pencils feature quotes from Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities, The Art of War, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, The Prophet, and The Marrow of Tradition

I'm tempted to buy a set.


Created September 7, 2023.
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Lane Moore on Anne of Green Gables

This week, I finished reading a book called You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult by Lane Moore. She's a writer, musician and comedian.

Having moved this summer, and feeling lonely in general, I thought the book might be helpful to me. I’m always searching for kindred spirits and hoping for that ideal bosom friendship depicted in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. I think that this belief in true and lasting friendship is a common bond shared by people who love the Anne series. What I didn’t know when I started reading You Will Find Your People is that its author Lane Moore loves and identifies with Anne Shirley too and that Anne would turn up in her book.

In Chapter 2, Moore talks about Anne Shirley and Diana Barry’s friendship as being an exception to the general categories of female friendship depicted in the media. She writes:

"There are of course so many beautiful exceptions in pop culture. Particularly, Anne Shirley and Diana Barry's lifelong, deeply devoted, Platonic Soulmates friendship in Anne of Green Gables. (Though, their friendship is arguably two people who are totally in love with each other, and I will forever stand by this correct assumption, but that's for another book.) But if such a Platonic Soulmate exists, where do you find that devotion that sees you through adolescence, into adulthood, into marriages and kids and moving and new careers? Where do you find that magical, poetic friendship where you both grow on parallel tracks—even if they're not the same tracks exactly—into people who still connect deeply, not only as the people you once were, but also as the people you're constantly becoming?"

I wonder that too, where do you find that truest of friendships depicted in Anne of Green Gables? Sometimes I’ve wondered if this type of friendship really exists or if it’s simply fiction, but I still hope it’s something real and attainable.

Later on in the book, in Chapter 14, which is titled, "Friend Breakups: How to Know When to Leave, How to Do It, and How to Cope with the Grief," Lane Moore begins the chapter with a quote from L.M. Montgomery’s novel:

Even though we meet as strangers now I still love her with an inextinguishable love.
-Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

Anne's statement really captures the grief when a friendship feels lost.

After finishing the book, I read a beautiful essay where Lane Moore talks about friendship and Anne of Green Gables called, "I Want a Bosom Friendship Like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry." She wrote the essay for Powell’s Books Blog on April 25, 2023. (Until just a couple months ago, I used to live a few blocks from Powell’s). Moore's essay is really lovely, and I think any fan of Anne of Green Gables should read it.

Moore writes about her lifelong goal, saying, "For me, I want a bosom friendship like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry from Anne of Green Gables more than just about anything in this world." She writes, "When I was a kid, I would read Lucy Maude Montgomery's words describing bosom friends, which boiled down this very romantic sentiment: two people who were absolutely platonic while at the same time being absolutely soulmates." She continues, saying, "I knew I wanted bosom friends. I wanted friends who I could be openly romantic with, maybe a little dramatic with, and also extremely silly with, who I could get drunk on cherry cordials with…"

I love her description of Anne and Diana’s friendship: "Their friendship was about full acceptance and full support of each other. In the face of cruel classmates, and a frustrating world, Anne had Diana's back and Diana had hers just the same."

No wonder so many of us long for a friendship like theirs.


Moore has also mentioned Anne of Green Gables in the following interviews. Check them out:

"What Attachment Styles Teach Us About Our Friendships: They’re Not Just for Romantic Relationships" by Lane Moore, Elle (June 28, 2023)

"Lane Moore: 5 Books That Make Me Feel Less Alone" by Lane Moore, Strand Book Store (October 30, 2018)

Image Credits:
Left: Photograph of Lane Moore from her website.
Right: Screen capture of Megan Follows as Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel © Sullivan Entertainment.

Created September 5, 2023.
© worldofanneshirley.com

One late April evening

"Marilla, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting, realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest."
-L.M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables

Read more quotes by L.M. Montgomery.

Image credit:
Photograph by World of Anne Shirley.

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Created April 20, 2023. Last updated April 19, 2024.
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Read Anne of Green Gables with Reddit's Online Book Club

Recently, I joined Reddit's Book Club Community because I thought it would be fun to read books with a big online group. By chance, soon after joining, Anne of Green Gables was chosen as Reddit's Book Club Runner Up Read.



Have you ever wanted to read or re-read Anne with a group? Well, here's your chance!


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Created April 18, 2023.
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Anne of Green Gables and the Comfort of Reading Books

"'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything."

As a lonely orphan, Anne Shirley finds solace in books. Reading provides her with comfort and room to explore, learn, and grow. We learn about Anne's love of words, stories, and books early on in the novel Anne of Green Gables.

In Chapter 5, Marilla has decided to take Anne back to Mrs. Spencer. She expects that Anne will be returned to the asylum in Nova Scotia. Aware of her fate, Anne decides that she will still enjoy the buggy ride to Mrs. Spencer’s home. Anne looks around and sees beauty in an early wild rose and comments on how the color pink is "bewitching."

When Anne asks Marilla if she ever knew anyone whose hair was red when she was young that changed to a different color when she grew up, Marilla coldly dashes Anne’s hopes. Anne then quotes a sentence she read once telling Marilla, "Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything."

Marilla is prosaic. She doesn’t see anything comforting in Anne’s quote. Anne explains that she finds the words, "nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine in a book." Anne's imagination saves her and comforts her and provides her with hope when things are dark.

Just as Anne finds comfort in stories, quotes, and reading, the readers of Anne of Green Gables find comfort in L.M. Montgomery’s creation. Anne Shirley is a character who somehow brings comfort and joy to readers everywhere.


Image credit:
Drawing of Anne Shirley reading a book in front of Green Gables from Akage no An, the anime production of Anne of Green Gables.

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Created April 12, 2023.
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A is for Anne

A is for Anne is a children's book by Mo Duffy Cobb with illustrations by Ellie Arscott. It's a board book featuring rhymes about Anne of Green Gables that was published by Pownal Street Press in February 2023. The book is 24 pages long and geared toward young children.

Here is the book's description from Pownal Street Press:

A story of identity, imagination and poise, A is for Anne will be enjoyed by all — from the very young to the eloquent Montgomery scholar. In this voyage through Anne’s alphabet, Anne meets the kindred spirits of Avonlea as she falls in love with Prince Edward Island and all its beauty. Written by Prince Edward Island author Mo Duffy Cobb and illustrated by renowned Canadian visual artist Ellie Arscott, A is for Anne will leave the readers’ hair flying in the wind.

Image credit:
Cover of A is for Anne.

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Created March 13, 2023. Last updated September 19, 2025.
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The Grace of Wild Things

The Grace of Wild Things (2023) by Heather Fawcett is a fantasy adaptation of L.M. Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables. The story is 368 pages in length, and it is an imaginative re-telling of the classic story. Fawcett's tale is about a magical orphan named Grace who becomes the apprentice of a dangerous witch in the woods.

In an essay at The New York Times, Catherine Hong reviewed several modern adaptations of Anne of Green Gables. Hong describes The Grace of Wild Things as, "The least obvious Anne reboot of all, this middle-grade fantasy is about a hotheaded young sorceress named Grace who persuades a terrifying child-eating witch to take her in as an apprentice. The touchstone scenes are all here. But the truest homage it pays is in conveying a child’s intense connection to home."

Emma Kantor interviewed Heather Fawcett in an article for Publishers Weekly where Fawcett described her bond with Anne Shirley saying, "I felt a strong connection to Anne immediately as someone who also enjoyed making up stories about ordinary things." She described her early experience reading Anne of Green Gables by saying, "My first impression was that it read like a fairy tale—there was a sense of the enchanted in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s descriptions, through Anne, of Prince Edward Island and Green Gables itself."

Fawcett explained her motivation to re-imagine Anne's story saying, "I’ve always wanted to retell Anne of Green Gables as fantasy, because I think the story lends itself well to that sort of thing, with Anne’s imagination adding supernatural flourishes to what is overall a fairly down-to-earth narrative about school and relationships and mishaps with baking and what not."

Although the fantasy re-telling is not a faithful scene-by-scene recreation of Anne's story, Fawcett explained that she aimed "to preserve the heart of the story and the core architecture." She went on to say, "Anne of Green Gables, to me, has always been first and foremost about the idea of home; it’s about an orphan girl who has never known what that is, not only because she’s an orphan but because she’s different." 


Here is the description of the book from HarperCollins Publishers:

An inventive and fantastical reimagining of Anne of Green Gables—with magic and witches!—that explores found family, loss, and the power of a girl's imagination, from the acclaimed author of The Language of Ghosts and The School Between Winter and Fairyland. Perfect for readers who loved The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Serafina and the Black Cloak.

"A magical, witchy, and thoroughly successful homage to a classic." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Grace has never been good at anything except magic—not that anyone believes her.

While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.

But the witch is that bad—she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them.

But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.

Reviews

"An exuberant tale of belonging and hope."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review) (full review)

"This alternative-universe romp is perfect for those who like their fantasy light and sentimental and enjoy a bit of L. M. Montgomery pastiche."
—The Horn Book

ISBN-13: 978-0063142626


Image credit:
Book cover of The Grace of Wild Things.

References:
Hong, Catherine. (November 4, 2022). Anne of Everywhere: Suddenly, remakes and adaptations of L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” series are proliferating. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/books/review/anne-of-green-gables-reboots.html.

Kantor, Emma. (September 1, 2022). Kindred Spirits: Children's Authors Reimagine 'Anne of Green Gables.' Publishers Weekly. Retrieved from: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/90208-kindred-spirits-children-s-authors-reimagine-anne-of-green-gables.html.

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Created Feb 25, 2023. Last updated September 18, 2025.
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