This post is not against Meghan O'Rourke or her piece (a very good discussion of the book's place in canon without losing sight of either.) But I do have a question for the person who chose to highlight the piece by begging the comparison it to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, probably because O'Rourke mentioned Twain in the first paragraph. Are you a moron?

I believe you meant The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Twain book that has more in common with Ann of Green Gables. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a novel you want to draw comparisons with since most will come up wanting.

It goes to show a lack of critical thinking and imagination of you, the editor (Again not O'Rourke since she again wrote a piece about the merits of the book rather than trying to take worth from other) by just simply plucking the one novel they remember from school without thinking of what made that book so memorable in the first place, that being a darkly rendered human comedy told by an unreliable narrator, cutting in its depiction of what harm people can and will do to one another.

If you were looking for superficial traits that title characters have in common to use, why not just ask if it as good as Lolita, another tale of a young orphaned girl who captures the heart of those people around her?

Idiot.

I'm not sure that "hearts" are the correct part of the bodies around her that Lolita was capturing... ;)

It's Anne of Green Gables. The "e" is surprisingly important. :)

(And That "e" stands for enthralling). Anne of Green Gables may not quite approach Huck for sheer genius (or rather: Anne of Green Gables Is genius it it's Own way; thank you very much) - but it's Much better than Tom Sawyer.

Apparently Mark Twain, himself was enthralled with Anne, too. :P

OOOOHHHH. That ANNE of Green Gables. I thought O'Rourke was talking about the cheap Minnesota knock-off. You know, like Harold Potter and the Wizard Formerly Known as Prince Again.

So what you're saying is, whoever chose the title of this article missed the point, because when the author wrote that Anne of Green Gables should be placed among the canon of great literature about children, what she meant was that it's as good as some other books for kids. She couldn't possibly have meant that it was as good - in a different way - as a book considered one of the great classics of literature, a book that famously captures the spirit of a particular place and time in history! How silly of the editor to have interpreted it that way.

Because as we all know, a "darkly rendered" book about "what harm people can do" is automatically far more valuable as literature than a lighter-toned success story.

First of all, it was not the author since she never made the comparison either in her title or piece which I found found I I said earlier informative. I was commenting on the weakness of the literary criticism being practiced by whoever decided to write the copy for the graphic blurb. It showed poor judgement and even poorer reading skills in comparing ANNE to a novel that its themes and scope do not match those of the volumes being written about. The blurb writer should have stuck to the part of the canon that exemplifies the best of literature about children. It could have been HORATIO ALGER or perhaps the Nick Smith stories of Hemingway. These are about coming of age and fit better the call for comparison. Or for the obvious, LITTLE WOMEN, which the author does call out.

I never said anything about which is of more value: AOGG or LOLITA. I did not offer any comparisons beyond Tom Sawyer (though that could be said to not be classic while still wildly popular mainly for nostalgic reasons). All literature has value to the readers who bring something away from it. My point was not value, but the lack of thematic similarities.