Thursday, June 27, 2013

In Which I Go All Philippa On You

Have you noticed that I'm a bit addicted to ellipses?  Well, I am.  They're so expressive!  :D
...Anyway...
Y'all know who Philippa is, right?  In case you didn't, well, she's a character from Anne of the Island who can never make up her mind.  She's funny and one of my favorite characters...along with almost everybody else.  :D
I was vacillating between several post options for today- A character study (groan!) of Diana Barry or Elinor Dashwood (two of my Very Favorite Characters) or a review of P&P95.
But then...I remembered at least three other posts that I'd considered doing, and soon I was lost in a hopeless muddle of choices.
...That's when I remembered Philippa.  Thinking with amusement how much I was acting like her, I decided that I would act like her and did eeny, meeny, miny, moe.  The post I picked was...
A review of The Story Girl!
This will be a short review- just a summary and my thoughts on it.
Oh, and The Story Girl will hereafter be abbreviated as TSG.
TSG is about a group of cousins and their friends who live on Prince Edward Island.  (Rather obviously, since the author of TSG is L. M. Montgomery.)
It is narrated by Beverley King, who, along with his younger brother Felix, is coming to stay with their cousins and their aunts and uncles.  The main character is Sara Stanley, the "Story Girl," who is called so because she has such great gifts of storytelling.
It's a book that's sort of like Elizabeth Enright's books- it tells about the little adventures that the children have.  The Story Girl generally tells a story in every chapter, which definitely makes this book more interesting.  Some of her stories were really funny or creepy.
I definitely enjoyed this book, as much as the Anne books and perhaps more.  Beverley was a great narrator and Sara Stanley was fascinating.  The cast of characters was rather amusing:
Felicity King, a very pretty, very vain girl.
Peter Craig, the hired boy who has a crush on Felicity.
Felix King, Beverley's younger brother who is fat and very sensitive about it.
Cecily King, the sweet, patient girl- although she is flawed.  She's sort of like Beth in Little Women, only slightly less...perfect.  She Spoiler comes to the same end, though, I think End of Spoiler.
Dan King, the typical mischievous prankster boy.
Sara Ray, the neighbor girl who cries at every single thing she can.
Sara Stanley, the Story Girl, who has an almost magical power in her voice.
And, of course, Beverley King, the narrator.  Some people have complained that he didn't have a personality, but I thought of him as being sort of a shy, intellectual boy who still enjoyed playing outside.

All of them thrown together make for some pretty fun adventures.  I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed reading Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon.  It was fun and I found myself really caught up in the characters and story and wondering what would happen next.  There wasn't as much character development as in AGG, which is perhaps because TSG had a narrator who was looking back at those years, but it was a great book nonetheless.

Notes: Tomorrow I will post the first episode of P&P95!!  I'm so excited...
I have a dream cast almost ready for TSG, so it should come up sometime next week.
-Miss Jane Bennet

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