The Christmas of my 7th grade year (I believe--it was Wisconsin, anyway), my mom got me the complete Emily trilogy from L. M. Montgomery.
Okay, there's some background here you should know. Before we moved to Wisconsin, we lived in St. Louis. At some point during our time there, I discovered Anne of Green Gables. BEFORE I saw the PBS movie, mind you. And I loved it so much that I bought the rest of them, one by one, with my own money. Which often meant I showed up at B. Dalton with a baggie full of change I'd pulled from couch cushions, the sidewalk, and any other place I could find them. Books were somewhat cheaper then. Closer to $3 than $7.
I was so proud of those purchases and I devoured every book as I got it. Those were best beloved friends of mine.
Back to Wisconsin. I'd read all eight of the Anne series and reread and reread them tirelessly. And then in a Shopko in Oshkosh, I saw the most amazing thing: another series by L. M. Montgomery. A trilogy on a girl named Emily. I nearly cried right there in the store...I'm sure I squealed loudly. I told my mom I didn't want anything else for Christmas as long as I got those.
And I did.
I'm pretty sure I waited to eat Christmas lunch with the family before I sped to my room and opened the first book. But for the next day and a half or so, I didn't emerge from my room except to use the bathroom and be forced to eat by my mom (who, if I recall correctly, took pity on me and started bringing me sandwiches).
It was glorious!
During my weekend in Kansas City with the fam a couple of weeks ago, my cousins and I made a detour to a couple of bookstores. And that's where I found this:
This is the second book in the Emily series. It's far older than any copy I own, of course. Which is an enormous part of its charm.
Even these weren't the earliest incarnation of the books. Can you imagine a girl of the 1930s sitting down and falling in love with the same story I did over half a century later?
I wanted to take this home with me in the worst way. Unfortunately, it was priced at $40. So it stays in Mission, Kansas, up on the shelf in an obscure little used book store, waiting for someone to take it home.
I hope it will live with a little girl who will love it every bit as much as I still do.
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