Montgomery’s pastoral village of Avonlea is replaced by a huge apartment building (the Avon-Lea) in an unnamed Canadian city with ravines that imply Toronto Alcott’s Marsh family lives in a generic American town. Films, TV series, stage plays, spin-off fictions, musicals, ballets, and cartoons are now joined by two graphic novels by Vancouver-based Kathleen Gros, in whose hands “coming of age” transforms to “coming out.”Įngagingly illustrated in full colour, both books are aimed at young readers seeking their identities as they wrestle with the complex emotions that beset adolescents, and both are set in modern urban environments where racial diversity is the norm. How might the stories of two classic young heroines, Jo March of Little Women (1868) and Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables (1908), unfold today, more than a century after they first appeared in print? The world of North American adolescent girls has irrevocably changed from quill pens and crinolines to cell phones and blue jeans, yet the stories of these particular characters, whose individualism and creativity reflect the experiences of their authors, remain sufficiently captivating to be retold and adapted into multiple formats. Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Quill Tree Books), 2022 Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Quill Tree Books), 2020Īnne: An Adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (Sort Of) Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) Two books reviewed by Carole Gerson in consultation with Clarissa Gerson
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