(Half a) Story Hour - Episode 11

Title card for (Half a) Story Hour, Episode 11: a cartoon fox looks up at a podcasting microphone in front of a stack of books on a wooden desk; background: a wooden crate, a marquee letter "I," a small toadstool and black-and-white cat curtains.

Episode 11, “Anne of Green Gables: We Finish Chapter Three and Start Chapter Four”

Anne spends the night at Green Gables and wakes to a world of wonders out her gable window, while Marilla and Matthew discuss what to do with their unexpected guest.

Tough stuff in this episode: orphan experience, pipe smoking, dandelions*

*Just kidding.

Inari (Half a) Story Hour, Episode 11

⭐️ Bonus ⭐️

Follow along here: Anne of Green Gables

Vocabulary: garments, raiment, tempestuous, prim, perturbation, a pretty kettle of fish, wrathfully, predilection, stammered, resolutely, heart-hungry, remembrance, sash (window), glistening, boughs, thickset, blossoms, fragrance, lush, scores, upspringing, airily, suggestive, lingered, comprehensively, radiantly, edgewise, consciousness, pervading

(Inter)active reading: Visualise, make connections

For teachers: Draw the view out Anne’s east gable sash window:

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Discussion question: How do you think Matthew Cuthbert feels about sending Anne back to the orphan asylum? What clues in the text hint at what he really thinks? 💬

Musical interlude: “The Swan” from Le Carnaval des animaux by Camille Saint-Saëns 🦢

Other Stuff…

The story talks about a small wood (in Finnish that’s called a metsikkö) “where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally…”

This ruin of an old house in the Odenwald Forest in Germany is overgrown with moss (the fuzzy stuff) and sits in a woodsy undergrowth full of ferns (the lacy, frondy things):

The stone wall of an old house overgrown by moss and ferns in the Odenwald forest near Waldbrunn, Germany.

(Image: Roman Eisele via Wikimedia Commons)

…and this oak forest understory is full of moss (and is apparently an excellent habitat for millipedes):

Huge stones and old oak trees covered in moss twist out of a forest floor thick with leafy matter.

(Image: Marek, Shear and Bond via Wikimedia Commons)

…and here’s my boy as a “teenager” by a white birch on one of our cross-country drives: I think we could say it’s “upspringing airily,” don’t you?

A lanky mixed-breed dog on a long leash explores next to a five-trunked white birch by a lakeshore at dusk, with a waning gibbous moon in the evening sky.

Easter 🪺: You tell us!

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(Half a) Story Hour - Episode 10