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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com

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Prepare yourself for some off-the-cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book, Chapter by Chapter.

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So, Secret Garden, Chapter 9. Yes, the strangest house anyone ever lived in.

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It was a good chapter. It was a lot of fun. It got me excited for Dickens.

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Dickens coming next. Chapter 10 is Enter Dickens. That's not actually what it's called.

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However, I do want to point out that I like the fact that this chapter is named,

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It's the strangest house anyone ever lived in, and the last line of dialogue that Mary has before she falls asleep is,

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It's the strangest house anyone ever lived in. I find that to be quite charming, quite lovely.

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I typically like a chapter either to have no name or to have a, you know,

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Into the wardrobe and what Lucy found there. That kind of feel, that kind of vibe. That's a lot of fun.

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But these are fun, too. Burnett is not disappointing with these chapter names,

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and I like when they're quotes about, I like when they're quotes from the chapter. That's a lot of fun.

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I don't, let me see. There is no one left. I didn't look in that. That must have been the last chapter.

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Or that's from the first chapter. I'm scared to see it. Sorry.

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Anyway, there's nobody left to come. There is nobody left to come. That's what, that's a line there.

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For sure. But maybe it did appear that there is no one left. Anyway, so that little distraction aside,

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I like the chapter. Mary got, well, last chapter ended with Mary entering the secret garden and being amazed by it.

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Her heart was beating fast. Her eyes were, you know, as white as sauces, whatever it was.

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And then in this chapter, we get to see her in the secret garden, and we have a little more interaction with her in the robin.

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And she starts going around and she doesn't really know what she's doing because she's never garden before, but she's seen Ben Weathersap do it.

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So she's kind of doing what she can, what she learned from him. She's doing her best. That's what she's doing.

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She goes around. She spends hours in there. She tries jumping rope, but then she just goes around, looks at all the different things.

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And there's these beautiful roses that have become overgrown. The rose bushes look like little trees.

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The roses are all climbing into each other, making bridges across stuff. And it's just, it's magical. It's beautiful.

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And then she goes around and she sees Ben Weathersap dead. And she hopes that it's not entirely dead.

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And she learns that it's not entirely dead. And it's interesting because now I want to shift to talking about the symbolism.

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When we met Mary, she was dead inside, but she has come to life through her exposure to Mr. Kuwait, to the Moor, to Martha, to people who care enough to put in the effort to give her some attention.

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And the greatest fertilizer is the gardener's shadow or the farmer's shadow.

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And of course, it's proverbial. It's not literally that the shadow of the gardener or the farmer is a fertilizer.

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It's the time, the attention, the care that they spend over their garden or their farm, casting their shadow upon it by their presence, will benefit.

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So if you have a garden that's lying, fallow versus a garden that's lying, no, not fallow, it's being attended to, which one do you think is going to flourish more?

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Let's leave aside permaculture and talking about food forests, which are wonderful things. I'm a permaculture advocate.

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But let's leave that aside and just say simply the one you pay the most attention to.

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Even in permaculture, you have zone one, which is where you want things to be that you spend the most time with and that you spend the most attention on or give the most attention and work on.

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And also that you have closest to your house. You put it right next to your back door so that you check out the herb spiral, you check out the, you get the eggs from the chickens, you remember to clean their coop, whatever it is.

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Similarly, that Chinese proverb talks about that. So I'm saying it's, while I said cast aside permaculture, it really does embrace that idea as well.

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And it just focuses on figuring out the best way to do that and to mimic natural systems in order to do that.

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You don't want to hear about permaculture or gardening for me, you want to hear about this book, right? So let's get into it.

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Yeah, Mary is the secret garden. The secret garden is Mary.

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There is life in the secret garden still. It is gray. It is tangled. It is overgrown, untended. There are weeds.

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And Mary ends up spending a lot of time there looking at the potential beauty and aching and longing for the beauty of the garden to be revealed, which will only happen in its due season.

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But it can be aided in blooming in its due season by her effort of weeding and cleaning things up and whatnot, which is what she does.

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She spends a long time weeding and then she gets the notion in her head that she can plant seeds in there and grow her own garden or have her own section of the garden.

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She can have her own patch of garden in the secret garden so she can watch it flourish and grow.

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And she also can do things on her own and have put her own efforts into it and put kind of her own stamp on it, you could say.

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I don't think she's going for like legacy or domination or dominion or whatever.

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She just wants to be able to have an impact because she loves the beauty of these things growing and having life and being able to nurture that.

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And she doesn't really have anybody. Yes, she does spend time with Martha.

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But between Martha and Mrs. Medlock, there's not a lot of opportunity for her to have interaction because they're both busy doing things in the house as they should be.

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And there's no governance for her yet. There's no other children there that she knows of.

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And she's basically left to her own devices and she's enjoying the garden.

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Martha's ministrations, Martha's tending to Mary has revitalized her and brought new life into her, brought beauty into her.

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Whereas before she was a sallow, sickly, indigent, mean person.

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Now she's pale and healthy. She's kind. She's loving. She reaches out to other people.

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She is being proactive. She wants to do things. She's not just existing. She's living. She's thriving. She's being something.

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She's doing something. And that's not to say that you and your ordinary life are bad.

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I'm saying she's living an ordinary life now. Whereas before she was totally apathetic and totally disconnected from anything.

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It just was like a sponge, just wanted to take and be basically like a big baby. And now she's not being that way.

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She's trying to engage in the world in a really positive way. And it's really beautiful.

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So just like there's life yet hidden in the secret garden, there is life yet hidden in Mary.

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And there's also this great idea of these bulbs. She finds these bulbs in there. They look kind of like eyes.

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She puts them back in the ground. She's digging things around with a stick. I think she was just pushing the earth.

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And it's a totally valid thing to do. But she asks Martha about them. She says, oh, they're bulbs for tulips or snowdrops and whatever.

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I don't know all the different flowers, but they're bulb. You know, those wouldn't be perennial.

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They would be. I can't remember. Anyway, they're bulb flowers, basically, and they take care of themselves.

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And it was interesting. Martha mentions that they're the ones that the poor people can afford because they do take care of themselves.

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They're so resilient, they come back up and they don't have time to go get a new thing and then put it in the hot house and then put it planted and whatever it takes.

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Like they just don't have the time. They don't have the energy on that to spend on that, rather.

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And it's interesting because you get to see that. Well, one other thing.

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Martha's mother said that it would be lovely for Mary to be able to get a garden, even if she just threw parsnip carrots or whatever.

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And that going out there and tending to the garden would help her.

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Now, I want to just say the prose was fantastic.

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It really conveyed all this really well, and it really impressed me. And it was just enjoyed.

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It was a delight to listen to, to read, whatever, to listen to.

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And I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I love this like simple, earthy, girly, childish book.

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Period. That's it. I love it. It's so much fun. It's so good. It's so enjoyable.

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And it's interesting because it's so humble and like I said, earthy and...

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Like it's not about the garden, it's about the people. But the garden is like a metaphor, sort of.

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Especially with it being sealed up after Mrs. Craven's death and all those different things.

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You can see like the metaphor. And...

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It's beautiful and meaningful and...

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Seeing the character growth within Martha, or sorry, Mary, is really interesting.

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Yeah, Martha being...

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Martha being this like, you know...

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This different kind of person from her and having such a different personality is so fun and interesting.

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This is going to come off weird, but trust me, it's true. And if you think about it and if you live through the 90s, it'll make sense to you.

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It's like the... Martha's like the black friend in the 90s rom-coms.

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What does that mean? I'm thinking of a walkthrough. Remember?

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That's the one I know where he's got the black friend.

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I know there's like tons of examples of the black friend in a rom-com.

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You've got the straight man, so to speak, or the straight woman, the girl, whatever, who's in love with the other person.

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And the movie's sort of from their perspective. And they have the friend who they talk to.

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And the friend encourages them, gives them wisdom, provides some communicative bits for them, helps them when they're down, that kind of thing.

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And they encourage them to pursue the love to whatever, right?

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They kind of push them out into the world and help them.

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It's almost really like a mentor figure is what it is, like an Obi-Wan or a Gandalf or that kind of thing.

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I just gave your uncle a nudge out the door. You know, I was hardly involved.

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It's kind of like that, really. But for whatever reason, in rom-coms or romantic comedy movies in the 90s, it manifested as this black friend.

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And they were always funny and they were always kind of cool.

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And I guess that's why she remembers the one I remember most distinctly.

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But I know there's been... And he was a male.

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The guy and his friend, his male friend.

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And I know there's been examples of the lady and her female friend as well.

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I just can't think of any at the moment. It's been a long time since I've been watching rom-coms regularly, especially the ones in the 90s.

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Well, Clueless is one.

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Well, does she hang out with her?

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Well, she definitely has a black friend who's from a wealthy family, too.

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And there's the whole dynamic there with that couple as well.

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But anyway, regardless, it's interesting because, like, Martha is disturbing.

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So going from the 90s, the surface level 90s kind of thing and being kind of weird about it,

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and then going back and saying, oh, OK, so this is like a mythic thing. It's an arch-type. It's an Obi-Wan. It's a Gandalf. It's a whoever. A Merlin.

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Like, in an interesting way, Merlin or Martha really is like a Merlin type of figure to her, where she's like this guy and this

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kind of otherworldly character to her. They're from two different places.

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They're from such distinct places that, at least from Mary's perspective, she's able to marvel at Martha

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and the world that she comes from, the things that she's able to do, and just how different things are for her.

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And it's all like a wonder to her, almost like magic, right?

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But Martha is saying things to Mary that she needs to hear, things that she doesn't want to hear, but that she needs to hear

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and that are good for her to hear, and she's helping her to grow as a person.

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And her discovering...

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Her discovering the...

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the garden, the nascent life, the sleeping life in the garden, and all that, and wishing and longing and hoping for the garden to come to life fully

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is like a parallel to what Martha probably saw with her, and a parallel for her own internal journey, which I know I've stated that already before,

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but I just wanted to bring it back since I went on that kind of tangent.

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And I think it's really fascinating. I think it's really like this interesting layered beautiful style of storytelling, and it's...

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I don't know. It's surprising. It's surprising how good it is.

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I don't really mean that. Not that I was expecting this to be bad, but it's really surprising and delightful and refreshing just how good this book is

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and how beautiful and how deep it is. It's shockingly deep, not because of the time, not because it was written by a woman, but just because...

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I didn't know... Well, I guess because it is of the time. I didn't know literature was this good for this long, you know?

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And I certainly didn't expect this book about a girl, you know, just to hold the seat guard and be like, that's dumb. Why would you like that?

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But again, I remember liking the movie as a boy, as a little boy watching it, you know, five or six years old with my sister.

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And yeah, there's a lot to love in this book. It's a very good book. It's a very enjoyable book.

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And I don't know what else to say about it for right now. I'm going to keep covering chapter by chapter. I ask that you join me.

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I ask that you let me know what you think about the book as well. And...

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That's it. Keep reading, I guess.

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Thank you.