SOURCE: Berg, Temma F. “Anne of Green Gables: A Girl's Reading.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 13, no. 3 (fall 1988): 124-28.

In the following essay, Berg revisits Anne of Green Gables as a grown woman remembering what the novel meant to her as a girl.

While it is impossible to verify the following statement, I do believe it is true: Anne of Green Gables was the book that most profoundly influenced me as a child and young adolescent. What I remember most about my childhood reading experience of Anne is my sense of total immersion in the story. I was Anne Shirley. I, like Anne, was an orphan. Not literally of course. I had a complete set of parents, but I felt alienated in some undefined way from the world I lived in. I was a lonely, book-ridden child. I had a few friends, but I felt different from even them...