Keep Anne Ginger campaign!

Red heads are often missing from literature. Perhaps it's the author weighing up in his/her mind what the biological chances are that this character would be ginger? (Turns out about 1-2% in the world at large). Regardless, there are a certain few characters that we like to hang onto... The Weasleys... Pippi Longstocking... anyone played by Lindsey Lohan pre-crazy (aka. Parent Trap...think that's about it)... and Anne of Green Blooming Gables! So when someone tries to steal away the ginge... we're not too happy about it and start screaming 'THIEF' or 'RACIST' from behind our books.

And that's exactly what happened (not the screaming 'racist' bit...). A new edition of LM Montgomerey's childrens' classic, Anne of Green Gables, has been released via Amazon's CreateSpace program and somehow in the process Anne has been bleached! Her "very thick, decidedly red hair" and "much freckled" face has instead become a buxom blonde suductress. Just so you know, in case you aren't already acquainted, Anne is supposed to be ten years old at the start of the novel...

Anyway, it sparked [red fire joke insert here] a red riot with a 'Keep Anne Ginger' campaign and several highly intelligent (as a race, we are pretty damn smart I'll have you know) moments of comic genius:

'This book is supposed to be Anne Of Green Gables NOT Anne Does Green Gables!'

'For those of you who have not read this series, I will give you a summary: Anne is a young red-headed orphan sent to live on a farm on Prince Edward Island. Unfortunately the adoptive family wanted a boy but she does her best to fit in and warm their hearts. However, after coping with her feelings of abandonment and insecurity, getting her best friend drunk, getting teased by a boy in school, and losing the only real father figure she's ever known, she dyes her hair blonde, dons a plaid shirt and becomes the town whore of Avonlea'

Monica Hesse of the Washington Post writes:

'We shall overlook the clingy, farm-girl plaid shirt (no, really, we shan’t; that shirt is an atrocity), and we shall do our best to ignore the come-hitherness of the stare, with the bedroom eyes and the bee-stung lips, and we shall even forgive the fact that the girl on the cover of this new, horrid edition of the book that we used to re-read until the pages fell out is raking her fingers through hair that cascades loose down her back as if she’s a Canadian Rapunzel. But the hair itself. The hair cannot be ignored. Anne of Green Gables has red hair. And this saucy impostor is a blonde.'

Ohhhh the hilarity. Do Google this if you want some other nuggets of genius on the subject...