Rainbow Valley

Anne's six children and the manse children next door run the glen between them, hold a Good Conduct Club, and take in a starving orphan who lies beautifully. Montgomery wrote it in 1919, and shadowed the whole summer with the Piper who is coming — the war that will take these boys. The comedy is the best in the series and the last chapter is the reason the book is hard to reread. Fifty plates of mothers and children, farmers' boys and girls at the gate, painted by Mary Cassatt and George Clausen between 1832 and 1901, keep the glen's children close at hand.