Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea

Pairing these two L.M. Montgomery novels in a single volume gives readers the full arc of Anne Shirley's earliest years — from her unexpected arrival at Green Gables as a red-haired orphan no one ordered, through her years as a young teacher navigating the Avonlea community she's made her own. Anne is one of the genuinely great characters in children's literature: funny, imaginative, prone to disaster, and deeply good. The values woven through both books — kindness, perseverance, belonging, the dignity of the outsider — hold up beautifully, and the books remain among the most family-safe classics in print. The honest note is that Anne of Avonlea, while lovely, carries less energy than the first novel, and some of the social assumptions in both books reflect their early twentieth-century setting. An excellent combined edition.