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Home. It's so quiet. I would hug it (the entire concept of home) if I could.

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I'm ready to go home. I don't want to do another hour and fifteen minutes of this.

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There's this lady who comes to the library on Tuesday nights sometimes, and she acts like she knows me, she called me "my friend" just now and we had a long conversation about my dress and used clothing, and I have no idea who she is. I mean, I know I've seen her before but I don't recall her name or officially meeting her, but I'm pretending that I have when I speak to her so she doesn't feel bad, and it's...amusingly awkward.

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Interlibrary loaning two books in a series is like

Book 2: almost instantly filled and sent out and arrives promptly

Book 1: some potential lender strings you on for like a week before finally admitting they can't supply it, request currently stuck in limbo, will probably arrive while I'm out of town later this month or something

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The Secret Garden (1975), a BBC miniseries adaptation, isn't so strong on production values or snappy pacing, but it's among the better adaptations in terms of similarity to the text and inclusion of--even expansion upon--elements that are often either very downplayed or outright omitted in most other versions. I can't remember if I've commented on it before or not, but how about I give you some observations, episode by episode? I'm a bit critical, but don't take that for dislike at all. There's a lot that I like in this version and a lot about the story that it gets right where others don't.

To give an example of the pacing, there's the glacial introduction, which goes on for nearly a whole minute. The music, however, is lovely.

Opens with some of the Indian servants about to flee the Lennox bungaloo, with mourning cries in the background, then shifts to Mary in bed mid-conversation with a woman named Taina who is taking on the role of the late ayah and trying to convince Mary to leave with her. Mary refuses. We don't get much context for who Mary is in this moment, which wasn't in the book. It does serve as a sort of exposition, but it also introduces something that doesn't make sense. In the book, Mary is forgotten in the panic; here, she's given an opportunity to escape the house in the care of someone who has remembered her, but turns it down out of stubbornness. Very different scenario.

Unlike in the book, we never see her parents (the conversation between Mrs. Lennox and the young officer is omitted), which could have been a helpful exposition device as well as demonstrating Mary's (lack of a) relationship with them.

The creepy near-silence of the dining room as Mary enters it to scavenge (although it seems a bit odd that her bedroom would be directly off a dining room at which her parents hosted parties), with the only noise being a sound of birds, is striking.

However, there's not the most effective sense of drama/menace, which is at least in part due to the nature of this sort of production. In many ways, the BBC adapations of this era were more like filmed stage plays than the more cinematic TV shows we're used to now. This isn't necesarily a bad thing, but it does take a little getting used to.

I think this might be the only film version that includes her encounter with the snake.

The closest we get to context for Mary is exposition from the officers checking the house for survivors. Some of this is from the book's dialogue, but it might have been more effective to have seen some Lennox family dynamics rather than just hearing about them.

There seem to be photos in Mary's room that might be of her parents, but we don't see them very closely.

Sarah Hollis Andrews looks the part of Mary quite well, more so than most other actresses who have played the role. (Mary is blonde in the book but is almost always cast as a brunutte.) Her performance shows some inexperience--takes in which she stumbles over her lines really shouldn't have been left in--but he makes Mary stiff, cold, blunt, and explosive by turns, which is accurate. The glimpse of vulnerability when she asks a second time why no one has come for her and her anger becomes sadness for a moment--that was poignant.

This is the only version that includes the Crawford children (three of them, anyway).

Mr. Craven is introduced with a shot that focuses on his back, which the 1949 version did too (albeit with menace--this miniseries is matter-of-fact about it).

Mary’s relation to Mrs. Craven is mentioned but it's left unclear through which parent.

If you've seen the 90s Jeeves and Wooster series, you might recognize the actor playing Mr. Craven (John Woodnutt) as the same one who played Sir Watkyn Bassett (father of Madeline).

This production chose to cast an older Mr. Craven (the actor was in his early fifties), probably because the book vaguely suggests it? Medlock says that "he was a sour young man," implying that he is no longer young, and his hair is described as "streaked with white."

The costume that Medlock wears on the train is taken straight from the book's description!

You can tell she's trying really hard to make Misselthwaite and the moor sound appealing.

The manor is said to be four hundred years old, not six hundred, because Burton Constable Hall, where the miniseries was filmed, was built around the late 1500s--Elizabethan rather than medieval.

There's less subtlety about the hints of Colin's existence than in the book. Medlock's stopping herself before referring to Mr. Craven's having a son happens in the passing in the text, but here it's very obvious and Mary notices and asks questions.

Mary outright states that she isn't grieving her parents and mentions without a hint of emotion that her mother "was beautiful, but she didn't care." Medlock seems shocked; Mary is matter-of-fact about it all.

Misselthwaite Manor is big and grand but not ominous and gothic as in many other productions. It seems quite grounded in reality--an "ordinary" British country house.

Another seldom-adapted minor character, Mr. Pitcher, Mr. Craven's valet--who is quite cold. This version doesn't really tone down uncaring or unfriendly adults as some other adaptations and retelling do.

The extended sequence of Medlock walking Mary to her room seems to establish the scale of the house as vast.

John "the strong young footman" is a very minor character in the book who is only seen transporting Colin downstairs and into his chair and has maybe one line, but the miniseries expands his role into someone who, along with Martha, often waits on Mary and Colin. This seems to be mainly for exposition purposes, to give Martha someone on her level to talk with.

When Mary first notices the wind wuthering around the house, she gets upset and goes into a flashback to the earlier part of her conversation with Taina. We see a greater extent of Mary's rudeness and her speaking a little Hindi(?). I'm really not sure why this is placed here; featuring the entire conversation at the beginning would have better introduced Mary.

Instead of going to straight to bed on arrival as she does in the book, Mary wanders out of her room and sees Dr. Craven leaving the house. She has questions about why a doctor was visiting and is told that he is Mr. Craven's cousin and visits often. True enough.

Martha is introduced from her POV, peeking at Mary while she sleeps. Jacqueline Hoyle was seventeen when she played this part, and I think she pulls off the big sister role well. She strikes the right balance of warmth and not putting up with nonsense.

John's face as he listens outside Mary's door and realizes that they've acquired yet another difficult child is amusing.

There are actually twelve Sowerby siblings in this one!

Martha's speech about assuming Mary would be ethnically Indian is present but altered in its wording, which is for the better.

There's an emphasis on Martha's and John's POV and reactions--both of them were played by teenagers, and they give off a youthful readiness to be amused as a means of coping with an unpleasant job.

John's weaponizing Mary's "it was the custom" to get her to say please and thank you is hilarious.

It's made clear that there is someone living in the east wing (not the west wing, where Mr. Craven is said to stay) and Mary catches John carrying Colin's breakfast tray. Only episode one and it's already making it clear that there is someone else in this house, even if we don't know yet who is it. I think this is kind of spoiling the mystery with too much information too soon.

Outdoor shot finally! The emphasis is more on Mary than the grounds, though. At this point the scope of the outdoors is kept small to coincide with Mary's narrow perspective.

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Tagged by @brown-little-robin. Thank you!

last song: The radio is playing "Carolina in My Mind" by James Taylor.

favorite color: Hasn't changed! You all know it!

last book: I'm in the middle of a reread of The Hunger Games.

last show: It was either The Good Place or Small ville.

last movie: The Secret Garden (1993).

sweet/savory/spicy: Sweet or savory, depending on the occasion.

relationship status: Hasn't changed! You all know it!

last thing i googled: The exact title of the above song.

current obsession: I've been too distracted by Life to get too wildly enthusiastic about anything lately, but the usual suspects are still simmering.

looking forward to: Going to see my family for Easter and then my brother coming back with me for a visit.

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Me and the taffy I pulled by being employed at the candy factory

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Colin Craven does NOT have rickets OR Munchausen by proxy: an examination of the character's medical history from the text

I saw it theorized a while back that Colin has rickets, that the text of The Secret Garden describes him as having it, and it gave me some pause. While at a glance it is not an implausible guess, I cannot find textual evidence to fully support it, so I'd like to clear up what the text actually has to say on the matter. I'd also like to address a popular theory that he has been subject to Munchausen by proxy--which is also unsupported by the text.

From what I've observed of the fandom and of adaptations' and retellings' approaches to Colin, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of the exact nature of his issues as described by Burnett. So I'm going to talk about

what the text indicates about Colin's medical history and symptoms

whether or not they correspond to symptoms of rickets or Munchausen by proxy

what we can infer from the evidence

Disclaimer: I do not have a background in medicine. Any conclusions about potential diagnoses are best guesses based on the resources I could locate. People who know more about this than I do, I would love to hear your perspectives on this!

According to the text, we know the following about Colin's medical history:

Born prematurely after his mother fell out of a tree while pregnant, not expected to live longer than a few days

Expected to inherit his father's spinal deformity (which developed in childhood), but there's no actual sign of this in his spine

Caregivers wouldn't let him walk and kept him lying down, although there's nothing wrong with his legs physically besides being weak from lack of use

Used to wear an iron brace to keep his back straight and "fretted so he was downright ill" after it was introduced

A "grand doctor from London" ordered the brace to be removed, said there had been too much medicine and too much letting the patient have his own way, told Colin's caregivers to put him in the humor to make up his mind to live, and advised the patient to do as he was told, not give way to temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air

Weakened immune system (catches cold easily)

Coughs and colds that nearly killed him two or three times

Rheumatic fever

Typhoid, which almost killed him

Once thought he had "rose cold" (i.e. a type of pollen allergy), a condition he had read about in a paper, after being taken outdoors and started exhibiting symptoms of it

The actual physical symptoms that the text confirms that he exhibits are:

Headaches

Back aches/general body aches from exhaustion

Generalized pain triggered by thinking of illness

Easily exhausted

Fevers after tantrums/crying

Difficulty sleeping (sometimes is given bromide, a sedative)

Poor appetite

Frequent stomach upsets from certain foods

So, with all that in mind, let's look at the symptoms of rickets and see if the text confirms that he exhibits any of them.

Rickets is a disease that causes children's bones to soften and weaken, usually as a result of Vitamin D deficiency. It is certainly possible that Colin could be Vitamin D deficient since he does not go outdoors, although there's no evidence that he doesn't get at least some exposure to sunlight (a major source of Vitamin D) through windows. He objects to windows being open because he's afraid of fresh air, but the extreme of boarding up the windows of his bedroom as depicted in the 1993 film is not in the book. When Mary comes to see him the day after their initial meeting, she sees the room in daylight, which indicates that the curtains are open even if the window itself is not. Another contributor to Colin's likeliness to develop rickets is his premature birth, which can result in an infant's not having received enough Vitamin D in the womb and thus being deficient.

Rickets symptoms include:

Delayed growth (No. When Colin finally stands, he is described as "strangely tall" and continues to be described as tall for his age for the rest of the book.)

Delayed motor skills (Yes but no. He does not learn to walk until age ten, but this is because he has prevented from doing so, not because he lacks the physical means to. Besides not walking, he does not show signs of being unable to move or use other muscles.)

Pain in the spine, pelvis and legs (Probably not. Colin speaks of "pains everywhere" when he thinks about illness, but otherwise, specific pain is not indicated.)

Muscle weakness (Yes. But this is attributed to lack of use.)

Bowed legs or knock knees (No. Very much no. Colin is so indignant at the suggestion of it that he stands up for the first time in his life to prove that his legs are not crooked.)

Thickened wrists and ankles (Not indicated.)

Breastbone projection (No. It is confirmed in the text that Colin does not exhibit any skeletal deformities; he's just initially very fearful of developing them.)

Based on this criteria, I would conclude that Colin does not show any signs of rickets. His condition does improve with exposure to sunlight and consumption of nutritious food and drink, including milk, which would be beneficial to someone recovering from rickets, but this isn't necessarily an indication that rickets was what ailed him--these are things that are good for humans in general.

Next, let's look at the criteria for Munchausen by proxy, which is properly called factitious disorder imposed on another. This disorder occurs when someone falsely claims that someone else who is in their care is in need of medical care. The diagnosis is given to the perpetrator, not the victim of this form of abuse.

The DSM-5's criteria for factititious disorder imposed on another are as follows:

Falsifying physical or psychological signs or symptoms, or creating an injury or condition in order to deceive someone. (No. Colin's father, doctor, and caregivers all sincerely believe that Colin is genuinely ill, and he has indeed had some legitimate health problems. No one is falsifying anything about his physical condition; they just don't understand how to help him. Preventing him from walking is a deeply misguided but genuine attempt to prevent him developing spinal deformity, not a means of making him appear ill when he is not.)

One person presents someone else (victim) to others as ill, impaired or injured. (No. This is not what is happening.)

The deceptive behavior happens without obvious external rewards. (No. No deceptive behavior is occurring.)

The behavior isn’t caused by another mental health condition. (No. See above.)

Colin's caregivers are "ignorant and tired of him" and have failed him in many ways, but no one is actively lying to him or anyone else about his being ill when he is not. He is the victim of overanxiety about his health after a difficult start in life, not deception.

(If anyone's wondering, the Munchausen by proxy theory is often applied to Colin as portrayed in the 1993 film, but it doesn't hold up there either. The Medlock of the film is overprotective of Colin, but she sincerely believes that he is ill and that she is doing the best thing for him by treating him. The details play out differently from in the book, but it's still a case of ignorance rather than deception.)

So if Colin doesn't have rickets and isn't the victim of factitious disorder imposed on another, what exactly is the nature of his condition, based on what the text tells us?

First of all, there are legitimate reasons for there to have been concerns about Colin's health at the time of his birth. He was born prematurely. We don't know how far into her pregnancy his mother was when she gave birth, but it must have been just enough for him to be able to make it with the state of medical care circa 1901. Even with current medical advances, there are still a lot of risks associated with being premature, including, in the short term, problems with breathing, regulating temperature, eating, etc., and in the long term, a greater likelihood of problems such as asthma, cerebral palsy, vision and hearing problems, learning disabilities, etc. Additionally, there's the risk of damage to him from the fall.

Colin as an infant is apparently "such a weak wretched thing that every one had been sure it would die in a few days." He surprises everyone by surviving, but he is still expected to develop deformities and die young. His father believes this, and so do his caregivers. Martha tells Mary that "he began all wrong. Mother said that there was enough trouble and raging in th' house to set any child wrong." Babies do indeed pick up on the emotional atmosphere that they're surrounded by, which can't have helped. This intense anxiety regarding his health is passed on to Colin, defines his upbringing, and will become a deeply-rooted part of how he understands himself.

A major factor of this anxiety is the fear of developing the same spinal deformity as his father. This is something that Archibald Craven predicts in his extreme grief immediately after his wife's death. In that context, it's more or less the grief talking rather than an informed medical opinion, but Colin's caregivers' concern for Colin's back might not be completely out of nowhere, even if it is overblown.

Archibald is frequently said to be a "hunchback," but whenever an actual physical description of him is given, his appearance does not seem to indicate kyphosis, the condition most often associated with that outdated term. When Mary meets him, she observes that he is "not so much a hunchback as a man with high, rather crooked shoulders." People he encounters during his travels perceive him as "a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders." We also know that his condition is not congenital but developed when he was a child, apparently gradually. Many adaptations depict him as using a cane; the text neither confirms nor denies this, but he is apparently mobile enough to travel extensively, walk on the moor at least as far as the vicinity of the Sowerbys' cottage (five miles from the manor), and do a lot of apparently solo hiking in the mountains of Europe.

I wonder if Archibald's condition might not be kyphosis but rather idiopathic scoliosis. This would account for his crooked shoulders and the onset of his condition in preadolescence. And it just so happens that idiopathic scoliosis can be hereditary, which would make sense in light of everyone's fears about Colin's developing it. So the concern itself may not be unwarranted, but the extremity to which it ends up being taken is.

Colin's ultimate problem is not that he has inherited his father's condition but that he seems to have developed what is now called illness anxiety disorder (formerly hypochondria--Burnett even specifically refers him as a "hypochondriac").

The DSM-5 criteria for illness anxiety disorder are:

The patient is preoccupied with having or acquiring a serious illness. (Yes.)

The patient has no or minimal somatic symptoms. (Yes, mostly. He is primarily preoccupied with developing a deformity despite no physical evidence. He exhibits other symptoms like headaches and fevers, but these might have other roots, which I'll get to later.)

The patient is highly anxious about health and easily alarmed about personal health issues. (Yes.)

The patient repeatedly checks health status or maladaptively avoids doctor appointments and hospitals. (Yes. He actively refuses potentially helpful treatments and distrusts his doctor.)

The patient has been preoccupied with illness for ≥ 6 months, although the specific illness feared may change during that time period. (Yes. He appears to have had these fears his entire life.)

Symptoms are not better accounted for by depression or another psychiatric disorder. (It is possible that he also has depression, more on that later, but the above symptoms don't seem to be connected to that. It is also possible that he has somatic symptom disorder, which is similar but involves the presence of and fixation on existent physical symptoms.)

Either illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder would account for Colin's issues, which revolve around an extreme fear of developing a spinal deformity which he believes will result in his death. This is a learned anxiety but one that he will make fully his own by applying it in ways that his caregivers do not anticipate. His nurse is unaware that he thinks he's developing a spinal deformity. No one is preventing him from going outdoors; whenever he is encouraged to get fresh air, he's the one refusing to cooperate because he believes it will kill him. He starts exhibiting symptoms of "rose cold" when taken outdoors not because he actually has an allergy (there's no sign of it when he goes out with Mary and Dickon later) but because of his extreme anxiety. His reaction to having to wear a brace is "frett[ing] so he was downright ill," because it's a tangible symbol of all his worst fears.

But he's had actual illnesses too, so where do those come from?

His easily catching cold is probably because he's been isolated indoors and thus hasn't had opportunity to build up his immune system. Rheumatic fever results from improperly treated strep throat or scarlet fever--easier to develop in the days before antibiotics; it also carries a possibility of heart damage that can turn up later in life. It's probable that he could have picked up strep from exposure to someone in the household who had it, but it's more surprising that he manages to get typhoid, which is caused by contaminated food or water. There's no indication that typhoid is prominent in the Misselthwaite area, so it's possible that he picked it up during one of the times he's been taken to the seaside. A life-threatening illness immediately after such a trip would further reinforce his belief that the outdoors is deadly.

And what about his recurrent physical symptoms?

Well, the headaches, general aches, exhaustion, sleeping problems, poor appetite, and stomach problems sound a lot like physical symptoms associated with depression or anxiety. The fevers he gets after tantrums might be psychogenic fevers, caused by stress.

Given this evidence, my best guess is that Colin has either illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder. He might also have some degree of depression, which could account for his feelings of worthlessness and lack of interest in living.

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I'm going to compare a commonality in two pieces of media that it makes no sense whatsoever to name in the same breath. Bear with me.

In P ride and P rejudice 1995, during the party at Lucas Lodge, fairly early in the story, Lydia and Kitty Bennet insist on some impromptu dancing with the officers (you can see a little of this mostly in the background at the beginning of this clip). The only other people there who join them in the dance are a pair of children who have been hanging around the younger Bennet girls, implied to be some of the younger Lucases. We never see these kids again, and this scene is only vaguely described in the book ("some of the Lucases," with no age indicated).

But there's a point to it. Putting Lydia and Kitty alongside literal children is a reminder to the audience of how young they are, Lydia in particular, who is only fifteen. Although she has entered adult society (unusually early) and brazenly flirts with adult officers who return her attentions, she really is just a teenager, and she doesn't belong in this setting. She has more in common, in terms of maturity, with the Lucas children.

Meanwhile, Superboy 1994 #9 (note the similar timeframe) opens with our young hero, who's ostensibly about fifteen/sixteen, on vacation with Tana, his twenty-three-year-old love interest, with the specific purpose of figuring out if they can officially make a romantic relationship work. But while Tana is seriously discussing the matter with her brother, Kon is delightedly playing with her young niece and nephew--before going back to being, like Lydia, an avid, often inappropriate flirt among the adults.

And this scene is serving the exact same purpose as the one in P&P. It's reminding the audience of just how young Kon is, how he fits in better among the children because he's basically one himself--and, whether or not the author is fully conscious of this implication, how inappropriate it is that he's in the position of viable romantic prospect to an adult. Which is kind of what's going on with Lydia too--there's some different cultural and historical context, but in both stories there are dire consequences to allowing a naive and immature teenager to have the status of an adult (Lydia is "out" in society too early, Kon is treated as an "emancipated minor" despite being more or less born yesterday), which makes them more vulnerable to predators ready to take advantage of their overeagerness for romantic attention.

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I was trying to tidy up the guest bedroom/storage room today so it can be habitable for my brother when he visits later this month, and it turns out that at some point I bought a used collection of the texts of Gilbert and Sullivan plays at an antique shop here in Boringsville and left it in a pile of miscellaneous items. I have only the vaguest memory of doing this. Merry Christmas from past me, I guess.

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Thanks for the tag!

Here's me on the left and Elystan in his pre-Book 3 era, wearing one of his ridiculous dressing gowns and reading depressing books.

A thing we have in common is we are both tired :P

tagged by @thatfriendlyanon for a picrew game, thanks! rules: make yourself and one of your ocs in the same picrew maker. featuring me (left) and my favorite clown, Rudy, right <3

picrew is here: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/257476!

tagging @isfjmel-phleg, @fruitbatvampiresociety, @gumy-shark, @swinging-stars-from-satellites, and anyone else who wants to play!

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Major leak in the library ceiling? We'll bring in a bigger trash can to catch the drips, set up a fan for the giant patch of wet carpet, and leave before you can ask us to put up plastic to cover the nearby shelves. No, we don't have plastic sheeting. Problem solved. Another day saved. Good luck with the constant rain/snow we're supposed to get this weekend.

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I am this close to just walking straight into the university president's office with my most pathetic face and begging her to let us get the library roof fixed. We can't keep doing this with the dramatic leaks and the wet books and the crumbling ceiling tiles every time it precipitates.

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Apparently the author of The Secret Garden on 81st Street is collaborating on a comparable graphic novel adaptation of A Little Princess, to be published next year. I don't have high hopes, it's likely going to be pretty watered down, but I do like the emphasis in the description on Sara's being a military child and think this would be an interesting facet of her character to examine in a contemporary setting.

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A few observations on The Humming Room:

A lot of these contemporary Secret Garden retellings choose to re-set the story in New York, for whatever reason (and they need to branch out--why not try TSG in, say, a prairie or desert locale? or the Pacific Northwest?), but this is the one that uses the setting the most effectively. Rather than placing it in or near the city, Ellen Potter sets the action in the Thousand Islands region, a strong choice. It mirrors the sense of isolation of the moor of the original story, while also allowing for an emphasis on nature in a way that an urban setting can't. (Let's face it: The Secret Garden isn't a city-oriented story. But A Little Princess is, and that's the Burnett story that would be better served by being reset in modern-day NYC in a retelling.)

Potter's prose really captures the atmosphericness of the original. The vivid imagery often hearkens back to Burnett's. It's quite a poetic book.

Much more gothic than TSG though! TSG has definite and vital gothic elements, but The Humming Room dials that up to eleven.

Roo's background is different from Mary's. She doesn't come from wealth and privilege and hasn't grown up tyrannizing over others, and she actually has had a relationship with a parent--a complicated one, but a relationship nonetheless (and I'm fascinated that Potter chose to make the parent that Roo angsts over be her father, since most TSG adaptations/retellings concentrate on Mary's mother). But the outcome for Roo has been the same as Mary's, even the specifics aren't the same: neglect.

Aside from his affinity for nature and closeness to our heroine, Jack really doesn't parallel Dickon very closely. He's not the brother of Violet (Martha), and the emphasis is on his being Mysterious and possibly magical, rather than a friendly, down-to-earth local boy whose closeness to nature comes from practical experience. Dickon in the book is said to be "funny-looking," but The Humming Room pays a lot of attention to how Jack is "so beautiful that it was alarming" and "his beauty was almost otherworldly." He's described more like a sparkly anime boy than anything else, and he seems much more like an expression of all the Mary / Dickon shipping than an actual reflection of Burnett's Dickon. From an interview I've read with Potter, it sounds like this was an intentional choice from personal preference.

Some of the supporting characters are a bit underdeveloped, and, as with many adaptations and retellings, there's a lack of a present Susan Sowerby equivalent. Violet's mother is mentioned often but never makes an appearance, although she should have. It might have helped enhance the last quarter of the book (more on that later).

Phillip's version of Colin's issues--severe depressive symptoms following the death of his beloved mother--makes sense enough but recontextualizes the character. Colin's lack of any parental relationship, past or present, is vital to why he is the way he is. However, despite the differences in the nature of the character's problems, in some ways Phillip is closer to the spirit of Burnett's Colin than most other retellings. He's imperious, cerebral yet emotionally volatile, and has been stuck alone in his own head for too long. This narrative allows him to be as messy as Roo, and their relationship to be messy while still developing into a genuine friendship, and it works well.

However, the last quarter or so of the book is rushed and underdeveloped, which means that Phillip's arc doesn't get the space it needs to be fully convincing, especially since he's absent for the last couple of chapters before the epilogue, and we don't even get to see his reunion with his father. Once Roo and Jack get him to the garden, the plot speeds up and grinds to a screeching halt. The book could have stood to be several chapters longer to better complete not only Phillip's arc but even Jack's, and perhaps to introduce Violet's mother.

Nevertheless, I think this is my favorite TSG retelling. It captures something that many others don't, and it's clear that the retelling comes from a place of regard for the original. It changes things where it needs to but doesn't have an attitude of congratulating itself for "fixing" or intending to replace the original. It's a homage, a love letter, and I still find it worth the reread over a decade after its publication.

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March 2025 Books

Moongarden by Michelle A. Barry (reread)

This is such a loose Secret Garden retelling that I haven't talked about it much because it's harder to analyze in that light. It really doesn't engage much with the themes of the original. The characters are much more flat.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden by Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Did not realize when I ILLed this that it was a juvenile biography.

Sun rise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Other people are already saying very intelligent things about this book, so I will not attempt to do so (also I made the mistake of having a single T H G thought here once and ended up with broken containment and a well-meaning assumption from a member of the general public that I could have other thoughts on something else in the series, which I very much did not, and I don't want to deal with that again). But, like every installment of this series, I found it quite moving.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

I love (some of) this woman's books, and I am so baffled by her as a human being, and that's all I want to say about it.

Father's Arcane Daughter by E. L. Konigsburg (reread)

On a whim, followed by a rewatch of the TV film adaptation.

The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson (reread)

I liked this one less than I remembered. Not sure why. Maybe it's Ibbotson's habit of designating some characters as irredeemably contemptible and without humanity--which is downplayed in this particular book in comparison to some of her others. But it's something that has a tendency to rub me the wrong way about an author.

The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn by Amber A. Logan (reread)

This never gets any better, no matter how many times I revisit it, and I want a dollar for every time the protagonist tells herself, "Breathe, Mari, breathe" or something similar.

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter (reread)

This is a TSG retelling that I do actually enjoy rereading, and I've got a few observations about it, which will be another post.

A Bit of Earth by Karuna Riazi (reread)

As much as this one diverges from certain aspects of TSG (like the gothic elements, for instance, and the CEN), this is another retelling that is pretty rereadable. It works well because it engages with TSG's themes of Mary's feelings of being alienated/not belonging, and recontextualizes them as Maria's being an orphan shuffled from one temporary home to another constantly, rejected for her aloof and unpleasant demeanor, and finally forced to live in a country and culture that is not her own and doesn't fully welcome or accept her. It's an interesting and poignant take. I'm not sure that having Colin's issue be ADHD here really works for me, but the conflict of his trying to hide his condition from his disapproving and academically demanding family does play in to the original themes of the character's struggle with shame surrounding his ostensible condition--which is something that I haven't really seen addressed in other retellings.

The Edge of In Between by Lorelai Savaryn (reread)

I've tried to enjoy this one as its own thing outside of its intent as a TSG retelling, and I just...struggle. The grief metaphor is very heavy-handed, even for a middle-grade novel, which leaves the characters seeming more like symbols or archetypes than human beings, which I find makes it harder for me to connect. Instead of getting drawn into the story's world, I feel like I am being sat down to get a Life Lesson spelled out to me. And of course I'm not the middle-grade target audience, but I've read plenty of other books for this age range that handled their themes with greater subtlety.

Blackout by Connie Willis

I enjoyed this one. Nothing intelligent to say about it, but I'm eager to get the next one so I am not left dangling from this cliff.

Comics

The Secret Garden on 81st Street (reread)

So busy trying to Fix All The Problematic Things (and very proud of itself for doing so) that it forgot what makes the story and characters work, I think.

JSA 1999 #76-87

Read in order to complete the series. It ends on a weird weird not-really-conclusive note.

Space Boy (reread...again this year)

Look, it's been a rough year and I read a lot of stuff that I didn't love this month. I needed this.