Multiple scholars have engaged Anne of Green Gables in various ways, but what we seek to do in this volume is to consider Anne from the perspective of those who are most underrepresented in children’s literature and children’s literature studies — Indigenous people and people of color, adopted persons, and other people on the margins. In “The Pleasure of Dreaming: How L. M. Montgomery Shaped My Lifeworlds,” Ebony Elizabeth Thomas writes about how though Anne of Green Gables was “removed from [her] by by race, ethnicity, nationality, denomination, and time, there is no other author so important, no body of work so seminal, and no personal philosophy so integral to the woman and scholar [she] is becoming” (A Narrative Compass, 2009, p. 80). Like Thomas, how do other Black girls engage with Anne? How do children in countries outside of the west (Japan? Korea?) read and consume Anne? How do adopted persons relate to Anne as orphan-adoptees? Given that Anne of Green Gables remains such an enduring, worldwide phenomenon, we intend to interrogate what Anne and the inhabitants of Prince Edward Island mean to these other and othered populations.

Inspired by the stories in A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women’s Lives (edited by Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites), we seek for possible inclusion critical essays, criticism, and stories from readers, scholars, and creators whose lives have been influenced by Anne of Green Gables, but whose stories and perspectives remain outside the canon of children’s literature studies. We wish to include essays from multiple perspectives (English, education, library science, media and communication studies, childhood studies, etc.) and from scholars around the globe. 

Manuscript Drafts | Due by December 1, 2024

Contact For More Information:

Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor, Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan (ebonyt@umich.edu)

Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (spdahlen@illinois.edu).