Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery

While I was reading Beyond Courage (see below) I needed something to balance out the heaviness of that book.  So I picked up Rainbow Valley.  I know the title sounds like a small child's brightly colored cartoon series, but it is actually a book seven in the Anne of Green Gables series.  In this book Anne is married to Gilbert and they are the parents of six active children.  The children live near a valley that they named the Rainbow Valley and there they play and fish and do all the things children are supposed to do in an ideal world.  One day a new minister arrives in town, who is a widower with four children, just the ages of the Blythe children.  The book primarily follows the escapades of the minister's children who get into scrapes simply because they have not had a mother to teach them basic social conventions.  Of course, the children are good-hearted, and everything works out for the best in the end. It is a delightfully old fashion book, completely unrealistic, and unfettered by any modern edginess. It was just right to read along with the other book, and sooth my troubled soul.(225 p)