Anne of Avonlea

Anne writes a long letter to Stella, her friend from Queen’s Academy, filled with numerous humorous anecdotes about her students. She finds teaching to be “really very interesting work” (68) due to all the antics and problems that she encounters with her young group, from having to correct Rose Bell to believing that Thomas Becket was canonized as a “snake” instead of a “saint” to Claude Wright believing a “glacier” is a man who hangs window panels. Anne also makes it a point to listen to the children explain their ideas instead of just teaching them arithmetic and reading.

During a lesson on composition, Anne asked the students to write letters about anything they wanted, and she included some of them for Stella to read. One student writes a letter about the strange town hall that is painted blue—a reminder to Anne about the mistake made by Mr. Joshua Pye. Annetta Bell wrote her a long, romantic note that puzzles Anne, as the language seems to be quite flowery and elevated for such a young girl. Upon confronting Annetta, the girl confesses through tears that she found a love letter from an old boyfriend in her mother’s drawer and changed some of the words to fit the assignment.