This book is a sequel to Pollyanna, by the same author. It is not quite as good. It gets a bit preachy in places (poverty is bad!) and there is a convoluted sub-plot with a boy called Jamie that was a bit contrived. I was dismayed to see Aunt Polly so regress as a character in a way I did not think was fair. This was not a horrible read, but it for sure was not as good as the original.

One of the plucky orphan books so popular in the early 20th century, thos book has much in common with Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and their ilk. Pollyanna is an orphan sent to live with her curmudgeonly aunt, and eventually she wins over her aunt and the whole town through her glad game, where she finds something to be glad about in everything. The book is a bit TOO cheerful sometimes, and the ending is a bit contrived. But it is a fun read and one of the better stories of this type.

This book is the first volume in the Green Gables series, which is comprised of Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne’s House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside. It introduces Anne Shirley, an orphan who is adopted accidentally when Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert send to the orphanage for a boy and get her instead. The book is part of a sub-genre of plucky girl-orphan stories which were popular at the time (Heidi, Pollyanna, The Wizard of Oz etc.) and is one of the better ones. Anne's irrepressible spirit gets her into various humorous mishaps, she wins over the curmudegonly adults around her through her charm, makes friends with the good-hearted locals and over the course of the series, grows up and has her own family.

This was the first classic I ever enjoyed, and I recently read it again as an ebook. I loved it just as much! The style is quite accessible to a modern reader and the description is quite evocative and picturesque, especially of the moors and of Heathcliff, the main character. The book concerns his unrequited love for the beautiful Catherine, and the horrible damage this causes to the Earnshaw and Linton families. Was Heathcliff just a bad person, or did a lack of love turn him that way? And could love have saved him? This book explores such questions.