Children's

Kickstart the Classics: Anne of Green Gables

Brenna Clarke Gray

Staff Writer

Part muppet and part college faculty member, Brenna Clarke Gray holds a PhD in Canadian Literature while simultaneously holding two cats named Chaucer and Swift. It's a juggling act. Raised in small-town Ontario, Brenna has since been transported by school to the Atlantic provinces and by work to the Vancouver area, where she now lives with her stylish cyclist/webgeek husband and the aforementioned cats. When not posing by day as a forserious academic, she can be found painting her nails and watching Degrassi (through the critical lens of awesomeness). She posts about graphic narratives at Graphixia, and occasionally she remembers to update her own blog, Not That Kind of Doctor. Blog: Not That Kind of Doctor Twitter: @brennacgray

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What if the writers of our most treasured stories had to crowd-fund their projects?  Let’s imagine what it would be like to Kickstart the Classics…

Anne of Green Gables
by Lucy M. of Cavendish, PEI

Help me bring the story of a little red-haired orphan girl and the home she comes to love to life!

My name is Lucy M. and I live with my widowed grandmother, supporting us through my writing. I work for newspapers and keep a journal and I really do love to write. Occasionally I think I do not love much else. I’ve given up on romance and instead have decided to develop as a writer and earn my own income.

I’ve been keeping these scratch notes about a little girl with a funny, happy way of looking at the world. She’s smart and she gets in trouble a lot. And she’s a girl! An interesting girl! Isn’t it about darned time we had a girl hero worth reading about? I mean. Really.

I plan to develop this series into multiple books. And perhaps, one day in the future, a series of iconic cult-favourite made-for-something-called-television movies will be made based on this work. And eventually, the entire economy of my home province will be built upon the celebration of this plucky heroine. That’s my goal, anyway.

Ok. So. It’s true that I’ve had some critical feedback about my writing that…hasn’t been great. There have been some phrases tossed around like “wild and improbable” and “lacking in literary art.” But I have recently come to the conclusion as I told my journal last night, that I refuse to be any longer hampered by such canons of criticism. Hence going the self-publishing route, y’know?

Rewards:

$5: I’ll put your name in the acknowledgement section.

$15: I’ll put your name in the acknowledgement section and I’ll promise not to talk smack about you in my journals later (they’re totally going to be published some day; I’m so sure of it I’ve already started recopying them for posterity).

$25: All of the above and a bottle of currant wine raspberry cordial. (Kickstarter says I can’t give away alcohol as a reward for my project, which seems unfair. It’s very good wine.)

Risks and Challenges:

So I guess the major risk is in my living situation changing drastically with the death of my grandmother and the social pressures on a woman in my particular historical moment and potentially getting forced into a loveless marriage to a protestant minister struggling with acute depression and having to move to a part of the country far from my island home where my heart resides. But really. What are the odds of that?

Ok, you can’t Kickstart Lucy M.’s project, but here’s one book project about a second chance at happiness that you can throw your support behind: He Chose Me: The Joy of Loving a Senior Dog.

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