What is the theme in Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery?

Belonging is a theme in the book. The little orphan girl's great longing to belong to family and community is at the very heart of much of Anne's motivation. We feel her ache when she cries out, "You don't want me! Nobody ever did want me. I might have known it was all too beautiful to last." Her romantic idealism, daydreaming and over-sentimentalizing of natural surroundings often reveal a lonely, isolated girl escaping into a world populated by her own imagination. She befriends the cherry tree in full bloom outside her window in the east gable when it appears she will return to the orphanage.