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This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.

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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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In Secret Garden, Chapter 11, we get to see this growing bond between Mary and Dickon

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as he is showing her how to do things in the garden

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and he even compliments the fact that she is doing good work kind of instinctively.

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He says, like, I thought she didn't know anything about gardening.

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And this is going back to maybe Chapter 9.

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Whenever she entered the Secret Garden for the first time,

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when she saw some plants that, like, they were weeding, or they were weeded,

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they had weeds in them, and some other things, she, like, thinned them out and pulled stuff away.

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And he said that that was really good work, and she asks him all these questions about flowers,

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and she wants to know, like, what can they get going there?

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And they talk about the Mary Mary Quite Contrary thing that she got from the...

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Let me see if I can scan this real quick and find the children who gave her that name.

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No. I don't know. Anyway.

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Yeah, so she wants to know if there are silver bells and things that look like shells, maybe.

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I think, for sure, stuff that looks like bells that can be planted in the garden.

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He says there's already one type of flower that grows pretty commonly,

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and that's been mentioned before. I don't know much about flowers, so...

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And then there's other stuff that takes, like, two years to germinate and come up, or bloom,

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until it's a flower or a bell looking like a flower.

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But, you know, he's trying to help her with that.

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And it's interesting because he sees this totally different side of her than these other children did,

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and she says, I think they were contrary, not me.

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And that's kind of fun.

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And she also... They also talk about how, like, she's getting fat,

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and I think the way that people thought about fat back then versus the way they think about fat now

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is totally different, wildly different.

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I think it's because, back in the olden days, if you got sick, you would die

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if your body just, like, gave out on you for not having enough nourishment.

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And this book is old. I feel like it's about 100 years old,

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but I don't see on Project Gutenberg here the actual publication date of it.

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Let me just roll back real quick and see if I can find it.

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Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.

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No, but it is in the public domain, which means it's a certain...

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Oh, 18... No, she lived 1849 to 1924, and this book was published...

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It doesn't say when the principal publishing was done, so I'm not going to get distracted by that.

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But anyway, I think she was skinny and sickly, and now that she's exercising

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and she has an appetite... She's exercising and moving her body,

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and it's getting her to the point where she has a good appetite,

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so then she's eating, so then she's not scrawny and skinny.

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She's, like, healthfully... She's not fluffy, and she's not husky, but she is healthy,

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and I think that's good and fun and cool and kind of like an interesting way for things to be assessed,

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that, like, you know, we live in a physical world.

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You know, this isn't the era of video games.

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It isn't the era of television and movies.

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If kids wanted to play and have fun, they didn't do this.

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They went outside and they skipped rope, or they, you know, planted gardens, apparently,

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or, you know, various different things like that,

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and I think that's very, like, lovely and beautiful and kind of nostalgic,

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and idealic, and the book isn't saying, and I'm not saying that the older world was perfect,

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but there are certainly merits and good things in it,

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and I really like... Dickon ends up saying something about...

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Like, it's almost as if... I don't know if Frances de Sajan-Bernette is Christian,

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or was Christian, whatever,

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and I don't know if she's, like, advocating or espousing, like, this Christian ethic

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or, like, really, like, Protestant or Puritan ethic of, like, you know,

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work is good and work will save you, or whatever, but I mean, the work is saving, Mary.

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Like, it is true, to an extent, in this book,

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but I know for a fact that when people are dealing with depression and things like that,

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if they can focus on somebody outside of themselves,

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if they can focus on something outside of themselves,

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it does help them to gain perspective and to feel good,

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that they are, you know, sleeping too much, eating too much,

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you know, just watching stuff over and over again because they feel depressed,

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they can, in some ways, this is not mental health advice, I'm not trying to say it is,

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but I've seen it in... what do they call that?

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I've seen it in personal cases, let's say,

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where somebody has been convinced to do something or compelled to do something,

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and they've gone out and done it, and all of a sudden they go from being closed and sad and...

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just upset in general to opening up and having some perspective,

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having a shift in perspective, having a shift in mindset,

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and being able to escape the drudgery and the dullness and the...

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like, their world has a shine to it because they were able to look outside of themselves

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and focus on building and doing and helping somebody outside of themselves,

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and I think that's really beautiful, and I think we're kind of seeing that in an interesting way here with Mary,

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and, you know, Dickon is a happy boy, I think because he's out there,

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and he's doing things, and he's interacting with the world in a very positive way,

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and I think it's lovely. I think it's absolutely lovely.

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I'd love to know what you think about this, and I also encourage you,

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I'll just do this now, to check out grobugs.com to find out the latest about my new book.

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I'm working very hard. I had to restructure this book, book one of a trilogy that I'm working on.

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It tells a complete story, but that's not the part that was a problem.

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Anyway, I had to elevate the idea because it was a little lowbrow, I guess you could say,

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or there was just something insufficient about what I had currently going,

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so I reworked the premise, and I did a lot of work on that.

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I'm about a third through expanding the outline so that I can see the whole outline of the book,

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and then say, am I satisfied with this? Do any tweak things?

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And then I will start going in and writing the actual chapters,

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but it's a book that features magical bugs battling monsters,

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and it's a book that features a boy who's having issues with his...

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He's not an orphan. He has a family, a good-loving family.

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He's having issues with his family, and he goes on an adventure, partly on his own

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and partly with the aid of a magical bug specifically,

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that helps him overcome these issues that he's having

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and escape from a great danger that he's facing,

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and then he has to, when he's out of that danger,

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figure out what he's going to do next with his life,

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and, well, let's just say he thought he was out of the danger, but it wasn't quite over,

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so things will get even more exciting, and the stakes will ratchet up,

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and it will become an increasingly more and more fun and exciting adventure story.

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So anyway, yeah, that's what I have working on.

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You go to growbugs.com, G-R-O-B-U-G-S dot com, to sign up for the newsletter,

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get updates on the book, and find out some things on a weekly basis.

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So anyway, until next time, folks, take care, be well.