Mollie Gillen's biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery for "The Canadians" series provides readers with an excellent introduction to the life of the author of "Anne of Green Gables." Readers will recognize some strong parallels between Montgomery's childhood and her literary creations like Anne, Emily of New Moon, and the Story Girl. Montgomery's mother died when the baby was only 21 months old and she was raised by her maternal grandparents in Cavendish, on Prince Edward Island. However, young readers who have been enchanted by Montgomery's novels might be surprised to learn that the author was quite unhappy as an adult. Gillen not only provides standard biographical detail regarding the author's publication history, she gets into her strong friendships with pen pals Ephraim Weber and George Boyd MacMillan, as well as her troubled marriage to the Reverend Ewan Macdonald. What emerges is a rough yet compelling psychological portrait of the author. This 64-page book is illustrated with a couple of dozen black & white photographs representing the people and places in Montgomery's life, many of which I saw last summer when I honeymooned on PEI. Many of the pages contain a question for readers to answer from the accompanying text (e.g., "What is blank verse?", "Why would the town need a taxidermist?"). Ultimately, Gillen's biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery will make young readers think about the relationship between the personal lives of an author and the stories they write about. I can imagine them making a point of finding out when a particular book was written and checking it against this biography to see what was happening in Montgomery's life at that point in time. However, I do not wish to suggest that this is strictly a juvenile biography, for despite its brevity it will prove insightful to adult readers as well as those who the age of Anne and her kindred spirits.