Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

What would you say is the central question this memoir asks—and how would you answer it?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

willaful For me it was “why are you srill reading this?“ 😂 12mo

BarbaraJean @willaful 😂 And your answer was: “I don't know and I'm going to stop now!“ I THOUGHT this book was going to ask: “How does Anne's orphanhood speak to the author's experiences of adoption?“ Her central question was probably supposed to be: “How does Anne's story reflect God's love for orphans (in a very broad sense)?“ Which is a very different book. I don't think she even did a good job answering that second question. It was all over the place. 12mo

TheAromaofBooks @willaful - For REAL 😂 And I do think that part of this book's problem was that it didn't have very much direction. A third of it is the author poorly summarizing various sections of the original story, a third is her providing “background history“ that isn't even correct most of the time, and the final third is her prosing on as though everyone is going to also arrive at her “obvious“ conclusions and find them insightful. 🙄 @BarbaraJean 12mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks “Prosing on”—😂😂 12mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

Why do you think orphanhood is such a prevalent theme in books for children and young adults? What feelings does it tap into? What questions does it provoke?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

lauraisntwilder I was just thinking about this last night while watching one of the Harry Potter movies with my family. Even those of us who are lucky enough to have good parents who are still alive have to face the world alone at some point. I think it's helpful for children to see examples of how to be brave, resilient, and true to oneself when their support system isn't nearby. 12mo

willaful I've always been a huge fan of orphan books and I don't really know why. Maybe because much of my childhood was scary and uncertain and they always end so well. 12mo

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder @willaful It's interesting how many kids' books have this focus. I was thinking classics (Little Princess, Secret Garden, Boxcar Children) & hadn't even considered Harry Potter! You both have great points--usually orphan tales end well & they help children see they can be strong & brave on their own. They're comforting in a way. I think there's also a fascination w/ seeing how kids figure things out on their own without grownups. 12mo

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TheAromaofBooks I grew up with amazing parents and a fantastic family, but my siblings and I LOVED playing “runaway kids“ all the time 😂 I think as a kid there is a fascination with the concept of adulthood, making your own choices and being responsible for your own survival. (Then you become an adult and realize that just means working every day, so boring haha) As an author, sometimes I think you need something dramatic for your protagonist to overcome. I ⬇ 12mo

TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) think it's interesting that in most of those books the parents are already dead before the story starts - orphanhood is presented as something you are rather than something you become, if that makes sense. I think I would have found a lot of those books much scarier if the parents had died in the middle - A Little Princess was a much harder read for me for that reason, I think. @lauraisntwilder @willaful @BarbaraJean 12mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks “Runaway kids”—YES! That was totally the appeal of Boxcar Children for me. Basically playing house with higher stakes! I love your point about an orphan being something a character already is. That distances the reader from the loss—from the reality of losing a parent. It also romanticizes orphanhood quite a bit, so “I want to be an orphan!” doesn‘t read as “I want my parents gone” but more as wanting to play with independence. 12mo

TheAromaofBooks Exactly!! And I think that yearning for independence is a much more universal appeal to younger readers. And I will say that in order to play Runaway Kids we first pretended we were in a completely different family than our own, which enabled us to invent this Evil Uncle character who was always chasing us 😂 So no shade on our own parents haha 12mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

Which episodes in the Anne series have you connected with personally? Is there a character or scene that is particularly meaningful or that has helped you in a difficult time?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

lauraisntwilder I was a writer, as a child, and Anne's love of storytelling and big words has always felt relatable to me. Like Anne, my writing hasn't taken center stage in my adult life, but it molded Anne's worldview and I think it did the same for me. 12mo

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder I felt the same way about the Emily books! I really related to Emily's NEED to write. I was like that as a kid, too. Both Anne and Emily made me feel understood--at least, their experiences being misunderstood helped me feel not so alone when people didn't “get“ me. Not Anne-related, but the tagged book resonated with me deeply (still does!) as a picture of being left out and hurt by favoritism, but eventually finding your place.

Jacob Have I Loved

12mo

TheAromaofBooks I always connected to Anne's love of nature (especially trees) and her need to be outdoors. I loved that Anne didn't hate “girly“ chores - she was still fine with learning cooking, cleaning, baking, laundry, etc. - but also enjoyed being outdoors and active. I feel like so many books tell girls that doing housework makes them a loser, or that you can't be a tomboy AND find joy in baking delicious cookies. Anne always made me feel like I could ⬇ 12mo

TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) just embrace things that I wanted to learn, whatever they were. @lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean 12mo

lauraisntwilder @TheAromaofBooks That's a great point. Anne loves beautiful dresses *and* stomping around in "haunted" woods. 12mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

What did you think of the book overall: the writing, the ideas, the connections to Anne of Green Gables? #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

So: I didn‘t like this, as is apparent in my review last night! And we‘ve already been discussing this question on that post, but if you want to complain more here, go ahead! 😆 It was hard to come up with non-complaining questions, so I pulled some from the book‘s discussion guide, and added a couple of my own.

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

lauraisntwilder I wanted to like this, I really did. It sounded so promising! 12mo

willaful Yeah, I'm in the disliked and DNFd camp. 12mo

TheAromaofBooks Maybe we should have gone a chapter a day so we could all rant together again 😂 I bailed after chapter 3. I almost bailed on page 12 when Craker helpfully said, “Yet Anne was left behind, wholly orphaned. I'm pretty sure this was a plot device on Maud's part, because had Walter and Bertha survived typhoid there would have been no Matthew, Marilla, Gilbert, or Diana.“ IT'S A BOOK. OF COURSE KILLING HER PARENTS WAS A PLOT DEVICE. I mean seriously! 12mo

TheAromaofBooks Then on the next page she tells us that “Anne as a stray waif didn't even have the rights of a stray dog.“ I get that she's trying to say that there was a society taking care of abused animals before there were laws about orphans, but saying that a stray dog has more rights than a human orphan is still simply not true, and she drew those kinds of conclusions, just to be dramatic apparently, far too often for my taste. 12mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks Craker really had a “bit” where she overstated things for drama (or attempts at humor, which usually fell flat). In my longer review on Goodreads, I said that this over-dramatic writing style actually seemed kind of Anne-ish. Except that Anne was 12-13, and she learned it wasn‘t good writing and grew out of it!! (And YES—chapter-by-chapter rants would really have improved my reading experience!) (edited) 12mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

“From our human vantage point, there isn‘t always an antidote to the poison. There may not be a way to save relationships choking to death. Too often, love wastes away on the vine of unforgiveness. But from the Redeemer‘s perspective, mercy and favor are stronger forces than all our wreckage and rubble. There are grace notes everywhere, if you have ears to hear them.”

That‘s 5 metaphors in as many sentences. I just can‘t. #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

lauraisntwilder It was...not good. 12mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

pan

I didn‘t enjoy this book, and I might‘ve bailed except I picked it for the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead. I feel like this claimed to be something it wasn‘t. Rather than exploring AoGG through the lens of adoption, or discussing one adoptee/adoptive mother‘s experience revisiting AoGG with her daughter—which the title & book blurb suggest—this is a series of vignettes loosely connecting AoGG to the author‘s life, plus chapters on her experience as an⤵️

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, julieclair, willaful

BarbaraJean …adoptee/her journey of adopting a child from Korea, and lots of Christian applications based on the Anne/memoir vignettes. Which was another annoyance: it‘s not presented as a Christian book. I don‘t mind if I‘m not the target audience, but I like to know who the target audience is. I‘m not that far off from her target audience, but this particular type of Christian-y writing tends to rub me the wrong way. Also: Craker kept over-explaining/ ⤵️ 12mo

BarbaraJean …summarizing scenes from AoGG, which annoyed me further. Of any assumptions she could make about her target audience, familiarity w/AoGG is a pretty safe one—but there I was, reading summaries of the Mrs. Lynde apology & the jumping-on-Aunt-Josephine scene. I wanted to like this. It just didn‘t deliver in the ways it promised, or the ways I had hoped. It did make me want to re-read Anne of Green Gables, though, so I guess that‘s not a bad thing? 12mo

willaful I agree on all points. I've been debating whether to throw in the towel or not. 12mo

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TheAromaofBooks That's why I gave up on this one. Her writing just really got on my nerves, and the constant summarizing of various AOGG scenes was driving me batty. Just... if I wanted to reread AOGG I would do that, because I like LMM's description of these scenes much better! 12mo

TheAromaofBooks I'm a Christian and I did agree with some of Craker's conclusions, but I'm not a huge fan of extrapolating Christian themes/lessons from stories that weren't intended to be used that way, at least not in the nitty-gritty detail she was using. It's one thing to look at overarching themes and another to pull out tiny random moments and insist that they *are meant* to perfectly illustrate some specific religious statement. It just felt very heavy- ⬇ 12mo

TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) handed and preachy. It was very off-putting to me, and I would say that I'm probably somewhere in the ballpark of her target audience. Plus her writing in general was just so over-the-top that I couldn't stop rolling my eyes. 12mo

lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean and @TheAromaofBooks The writing was so bad! I'm a Christian, too, but she had me rolling my eyes. Where was the editor? Also, what version of LMM's bio had she read? Her version didn't quite line up with what we've read, specifically the Herman Laird situation. And she went to PEI in the off-season & everyone had to open up especially for her. I hope she paid them well, because through that whole section, I kept thinking, ⬇️ 12mo

lauraisntwilder "Let these people get back to their lives!" I hated the recaps of AoGG, too, & found her conclusions off-putting & self-serving. Like, "here's how I'm going to make this scene fit my purpose." The kicker for me, was when she talked about being bad at playing the clarinet & said, "I am many things, but Benny Goodman I am not." Then, she goes on to say she's bad at sports and concludes, "I am many things, but Sporty Spice I am not." Get a new line! 12mo

BarbaraJean @willaful Feel free to throw in the towel—it doesn‘t get better. ☹️ I wish I had pre-read this one and pulled it from the schedule. 12mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks As I read it, I saw why you bailed!! For me, it wasn‘t so much the lessons she drew from Anne as it was the way she talked about them—assuming her extrapolations were universal. Rather than “this was meaningful to me and X is what I learned,” she says “we should all learn X” (from this random small detail). In annoying, overblown language. 🙄 12mo

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder Ugh, yes, I thought the same thing about several of the LMM biographical details! The Herman Laird stuff as well as her death. For the latter of those she actually cited the Rubio biog in her notes, so it felt like she was presenting her own personal interpretations of LMM‘s life without acknowledging that she was doing so. Which is both poor handling of sources and shoddy writing. All the off-season trip stuff bothered me, too!! 12mo

TheAromaofBooks I completely agree with the universal vs personal conclusions - I hadn't thought about it that way specifically, but I think that is what was annoying me. Every book speaks to different readers different ways, and while we may share some experiences, a story isn't going to speak to every person in the exact same way. 12mo

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lauraisntwilder

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

pan

This had so much promise, but it didn't deliver. Craker's writing drove me crazy. It felt like she was trying to meet a word count. She would say something relatively meaningful, then tack on another sentence that restated her point in a more "humorous" way (except I didn't think she was funny). I'm sure Anne is very meaningful to her, but this should have been an essay, not a book. It was repetitive & boring. #kindredspiritsbuddyread

BarbaraJean Oh my gosh YES. I‘m just about to post my own rant-y review. ☹️ 12mo

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LitsyEvents

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

Reposting for @barbarajean
https://www.litsy.com/web/post/2665573

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

A reminder that the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead discussion of “Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me” will be next Saturday, November 25th.

(How is that NEXT Saturday?! I don‘t know where November went! I need to actually start reading the book! 😂)

Please comment if you‘re not tagged and you‘d like to be (or vice versa!). Looking forward to discussing with all of you!

rubyslippersreads, quietjenn, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, LitsyEvents, julieclair, willaful

TheAromaofBooks So I ended up bailing on this one, but still tag me for the discussion - I'm interested to hear what everyone else thought. Maybe I was just in the wrong headspace for it! 12mo

rubyslippersreads I‘ve read this one, but may pop in for the discussion. 12mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks Oh no! Would still love to hear your thoughts, on however far you read! @rubyslippersreads Please do pop in and join the discussion if you like! 12mo

lauraisntwilder I've been reading it a little at a time -- I need to step it up! 12mo

willaful I actually forgot discussion was today, which is a good excuse to bail where I am. 😁 12mo

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LitsyEvents

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

Repost for @BarbaraJean

Another little #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead reminder - November's book is Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me. Perfect for #NonfictionNovember! Our discussion will be on Saturday, Nov. 25th.

My library has this available via Hoopla--hopefully it's easily accessible for everyone! Please comment on her page if you'd like to be added to the November list

LitsyEvents Original post: https://litsy.com/p/QUZmZ0tkckdz 13mo

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BarbaraJean

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me: What My Favorite Book Taught Me about Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All | Lorilee Craker

Another little #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead reminder - November's book is Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me. Perfect for #NonfictionNovember! Our discussion will be on Saturday, Nov. 25th.

My library has this available via Hoopla--hopefully it's easily accessible for everyone! Please comment if you'd like to be added to the November list - I currently have @TheAromaofBooks, @lauraisntwilder, and @rubyslippersreads on my tag list for this one.

quietjenn, Linsy, Jerdencon, Bkwrm7, LeahBergen, JenlovesJT47, AnneCecilie, Prairiegirl_reading, Centique, megnews, StayCurious, kwmg40, sblbooks, LitsyEvents, julieclair

rubyslippersreads I‘ve already read this one, but I may follow the discussion, just for fun. 13mo

willaful Tag me please 13mo

BarbaraJean @rubyslippersreads I‘ll tag you so you can follow! @willaful You got it! 13mo

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LeahBergen I think I‘ll pass on this one (but I‘ll still enjoy everyone‘s comments 😊). 13mo

julieclair Thanks for the tip about Hoopla! I have borrowed it. Please tag me. 😀 13mo

BarbaraJean @LeahBergen We‘ll try to make our comments entertaining. 😁 @julieclair You‘re welcome! I‘ve added you to the list! 13mo

TheAromaofBooks I have this one, so I'm set to go!! 13mo

quietjenn My library doesn't have Hoopla anymore (😒), but I'm going to try to get a copy! 13mo

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks 🎉 🎉 @quietjenn Oh, that‘s a shame your library no longer has Hoopla! I‘ll tag you in the hopes you get hold of a copy. 13mo

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