A Book Study: The Wonderful Garden

I have not been reading much recently. No time, no mental energy, and what little reading I could wedge into my schedule needed to be for research purposes. So when my friend Kathryn posted, as she does daily, a little quote from a book, it caught my eye and I decided that I was going to make time to read. I have a lot of books in the TBR list on the kindle app. A LOT of books. Some of them I very much look forward to reading, because friends wrote them. Some of them I think I will enjoy very much. But I want to give them their due of my full attention. Surely, I thought as I bought a collection by the author that included the little novel from which the quote originated, I can manage a children’s book in the odd moments I have? 

I could. So I came to read The Wonderful Garden by Edith Nesbit. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time I’d read anything by Nesbit. I know, she’s a classic author. I know that she has the same ‘flavor’ as Frances Hodges Burnett, who I adored and sought out well into my teens. I should have found her earlier, by all rights. But I didn’t, so here I am, a mother of teens and reading a book meant for the elementary set. 

And I enjoyed it. This isn’t a book review, per se. It’s more of a study from the perspective of a reader who is also an author, to see what the elements were that spoke to me, even though I was far outside the intended audience. Because, of course, I can use those in my own work. No, I’m not planning on writing much more YA. I’ll do a third book in the Children of Myth series when the muse strikes me (I need to read a few books I have acquired for research, first), but the things I liked about this book are more about the humanity and sweetness of it, not the childishness. 

For one thing, the use of magic that isn’t magic as a main driver of the plot in this book is fun. It can be seen clearly with adult eyes that there is no magic. To the children? There certainly is, and all they wished for came to pass. The book is, I will happily admit, more than a little twee. There is no real danger in it, unless you happen to know just how serious the lightly-played-off ailments that befall them could have been in the era. The book makes nothing of ‘colds’ or measles, and both could have been fatal when the book was set. The adults the children encounter are almost universally kind and compassionate to a fault. But the human nature of the children boldly doing very brave, or honest, things shines brightly nonetheless. 

As an adult, reading this, I could see right through the foreshadowing surrounding their friend Rupert, who might not have been what he said he was (and he wasn’t) but I don’t believe it was meant to be opaque. It was heavy-handed for the child who hadn’t read as many stories as I and who would have been needing a little more leading than I do. That’s an important thing to keep in mind when writing for the young – everything is new and wonderful and needs to be explained a little more clearly. 

If you want a comfortable, sweet read, I recommend this. If you have a child who enjoys learning about the language of flowers, this could be a very excellent read-aloud book. Pair it with looking up the flowers the children mention and use in their magic or sympathetic bouquets, and you could have a lot of fun, indeed! Best of all, it could be fantasy, or not, depending on how you look at it. Is the magic really working? I thought so! 

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