This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Find all my work at MJMunoz.com
Prepare yourself for some off-the-cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book chapter by chapter.
In Secret Garden, Chapter 11, we get to see this growing bond between Mary and Dickon
as he is showing her how to do things in the garden
and he even compliments the fact that she is doing good work kind of instinctively.
He says, like, I thought she didn't know anything about gardening.
And this is going back to maybe Chapter 9.
Whenever she entered the Secret Garden for the first time,
when she saw some plants that, like, they were weeding, or they were weeded,
they had weeds in them, and some other things, she, like, thinned them out and pulled stuff away.
And he said that that was really good work, and she asks him all these questions about flowers,
and she wants to know, like, what can they get going there?
And they talk about the Mary Mary Quite Contrary thing that she got from the...
Let me see if I can scan this real quick and find the children who gave her that name.
No. I don't know. Anyway.
Yeah, so she wants to know if there are silver bells and things that look like shells, maybe.
I think, for sure, stuff that looks like bells that can be planted in the garden.
He says there's already one type of flower that grows pretty commonly,
and that's been mentioned before. I don't know much about flowers, so...
And then there's other stuff that takes, like, two years to germinate and come up, or bloom,
until it's a flower or a bell looking like a flower.
But, you know, he's trying to help her with that.
And it's interesting because he sees this totally different side of her than these other children did,
and she says, I think they were contrary, not me.
And that's kind of fun.
And she also... They also talk about how, like, she's getting fat,
and I think the way that people thought about fat back then versus the way they think about fat now
is totally different, wildly different.
I think it's because, back in the olden days, if you got sick, you would die
if your body just, like, gave out on you for not having enough nourishment.
And this book is old. I feel like it's about 100 years old,
but I don't see on Project Gutenberg here the actual publication date of it.
Let me just roll back real quick and see if I can find it.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
No, but it is in the public domain, which means it's a certain...
Oh, 18... No, she lived 1849 to 1924, and this book was published...
It doesn't say when the principal publishing was done, so I'm not going to get distracted by that.
But anyway, I think she was skinny and sickly, and now that she's exercising
and she has an appetite... She's exercising and moving her body,
and it's getting her to the point where she has a good appetite,
so then she's eating, so then she's not scrawny and skinny.
She's, like, healthfully... She's not fluffy, and she's not husky, but she is healthy,
and I think that's good and fun and cool and kind of like an interesting way for things to be assessed,
that, like, you know, we live in a physical world.
You know, this isn't the era of video games.
It isn't the era of television and movies.
If kids wanted to play and have fun, they didn't do this.
They went outside and they skipped rope, or they, you know, planted gardens, apparently,
or, you know, various different things like that,
and I think that's very, like, lovely and beautiful and kind of nostalgic,
and idealic, and the book isn't saying, and I'm not saying that the older world was perfect,
but there are certainly merits and good things in it,
and I really like... Dickon ends up saying something about...
Like, it's almost as if... I don't know if Frances de Sajan-Bernette is Christian,
or was Christian, whatever,
and I don't know if she's, like, advocating or espousing, like, this Christian ethic
or, like, really, like, Protestant or Puritan ethic of, like, you know,
work is good and work will save you, or whatever, but I mean, the work is saving, Mary.
Like, it is true, to an extent, in this book,
but I know for a fact that when people are dealing with depression and things like that,
if they can focus on somebody outside of themselves,
if they can focus on something outside of themselves,
it does help them to gain perspective and to feel good,
that they are, you know, sleeping too much, eating too much,
you know, just watching stuff over and over again because they feel depressed,
they can, in some ways, this is not mental health advice, I'm not trying to say it is,
but I've seen it in... what do they call that?
I've seen it in personal cases, let's say,
where somebody has been convinced to do something or compelled to do something,
and they've gone out and done it, and all of a sudden they go from being closed and sad and...
just upset in general to opening up and having some perspective,
having a shift in perspective, having a shift in mindset,
and being able to escape the drudgery and the dullness and the...
like, their world has a shine to it because they were able to look outside of themselves
and focus on building and doing and helping somebody outside of themselves,
and I think that's really beautiful, and I think we're kind of seeing that in an interesting way here with Mary,
and, you know, Dickon is a happy boy, I think because he's out there,
and he's doing things, and he's interacting with the world in a very positive way,
and I think it's lovely. I think it's absolutely lovely.
I'd love to know what you think about this, and I also encourage you,
I'll just do this now, to check out grobugs.com to find out the latest about my new book.
I'm working very hard. I had to restructure this book, book one of a trilogy that I'm working on.
It tells a complete story, but that's not the part that was a problem.
Anyway, I had to elevate the idea because it was a little lowbrow, I guess you could say,
or there was just something insufficient about what I had currently going,
so I reworked the premise, and I did a lot of work on that.
I'm about a third through expanding the outline so that I can see the whole outline of the book,
and then say, am I satisfied with this? Do any tweak things?
And then I will start going in and writing the actual chapters,
but it's a book that features magical bugs battling monsters,
and it's a book that features a boy who's having issues with his...
He's not an orphan. He has a family, a good-loving family.
He's having issues with his family, and he goes on an adventure, partly on his own
and partly with the aid of a magical bug specifically,
that helps him overcome these issues that he's having
and escape from a great danger that he's facing,
and then he has to, when he's out of that danger,
figure out what he's going to do next with his life,
and, well, let's just say he thought he was out of the danger, but it wasn't quite over,
so things will get even more exciting, and the stakes will ratchet up,
and it will become an increasingly more and more fun and exciting adventure story.
So anyway, yeah, that's what I have working on.
You go to growbugs.com, G-R-O-B-U-G-S dot com, to sign up for the newsletter,
get updates on the book, and find out some things on a weekly basis.
So anyway, until next time, folks, take care, be well.