Anne of Green Gables: Reprise

Smart was always cool for Anne of GG. She liked big words and rapturous monologues. She dared to dream out loud. And now that she's turning 100 years old, she's precipitating all kinds of celebrations—and talk. She even scored herself a spread in this week's Newsweek, and there's a line or two inside that story that has a lot of bloggers blogging. That quote, for example, from AGG scholar Trinna Frever about the "literary smart girl" serving primarily as "sidekick" in today's YA books for girls. That sentence (also Frever) about a culture that treats "intelligence as a stigmatized quality." That pull-quote that blasts the headline right out there: "That Anne has survived so long is a miracle considering the state of young-adult literature."

I sat on my deck last night reading Ramin Setoodeh's story and pondering again the teen girls I have known—their blazing, undaunted, unembarrassed intelligence. I was thinking, too, about K., that young man who is writing poems that break my heart (and letting me read them, now and again), and how I can't ever help but be inspired by these young souls. Every novel I have written and am writing for teens has a smart, language-loving center, a heroine who studies the world and weighs her words and can't stop herself from thinking. Every novel imagines as its reader the young people I have known.

Charlotte, thank you so very, very much for your exquisite, touching post.

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