This summer, every Monday and Wednesday, I am hosting a series of guest posts here on my blog called Middle Grade Memories. In this series, authors, agents, librarians, and editors talk about their favorite childhood middle grade books. I’m beyond thrilled to share their middle grade memories with you.
Below is the twelfth post in the series, by my very own editor extraordinaire Zareen Jaffery, whose brilliance and insight makes Dr. Sheldon Cooper look like a trilobite or something. Also, she helped me make my Cavendish bugs. In other words: I LOVE HER.
. . . Ahem.
Read on as Zareen talks about one of her favorite childhood middle grade books, The Secret Garden. Then check out the giveaway!
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My parents moved to the United States in 1976, a few years before I was born, and brought one book with them from Pakistan: the Quran. It was wrapped in a turquoise silk cover sewn by my grandmother. Its soft yellowed pages were filled with unfamiliar letters, and the words seemed magical when my mom recited from it.
It’s no wonder that books became objects of reverence and fascination for me before I ever learned how to read.
As our family grew roots in this country our book collection grew, too. It was the summer I turned seven and we moved to Connecticut that we hit the home library jackpot. The previous owners of the house left a cabinet of their books behind, including leather bound editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, The Little Princess, and what would become my favorite, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
We always had gardens in our backyard (my mother was a botanist) and the idea of a secret garden sent my imagination spinning. As one of five kids, I was forced to share everything—even bath time! Mary, the heroine of The Secret Garden, had a little corner of the world all her own. Not that it stayed that way for long.
Once I met 10-year-old Mary Lennox, I was captivated. She was rude, selfish, and also very lonely. Both her parents had died from an outbreak of cholera while they were stationed in India, the only home Mary had ever known. My life was filled with s
isters and brothers and parents and friends. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for a kid to be alone. Turns out, not so fun. I felt for Mary. I rooted for her. I wanted badly for her to make friends and have a family. She was sent to England to live with her absentee uncle in a drafty, opulent mansion. When she befriended a local boy Dickon, and helped her not-really-crippled cousin Colin, all in this secret place she nursed back to life, it helped me understand what it meant to be a good friend. It showed me that kids are capable of doing amazing things.
And the book began in India! My memories of a summer or two spent in Pakistan were vague, but I had overheard enough of my parents’ conversations to know the countries were similar. In fact, my mother’s family had lived in what was now India before the Partition in 1947 separated India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. South Asia was never mentioned in any children’s book I’d read, and none of my classmates or friends had any clue how different life was in that part of the world, or that it even existed. Seeing it through Mary’s eyes made it feel more real to me (amazing how fiction can do that). I was curious about the place my parents grew up, and Mary had lived there.
The Secret Garden wasn’t the first chapter book I read (Roald Dahl’s Charlie and The Chocolate Factory gets that honor), but it opened up the world to me in a special way. It was the first book that I carried with me, needing to read a few pages whenever I could sneak them in between classes or at the dinner table. It dealt with issues that were sad and serious. It reminded me to see magic in the everyday. Turns out, I didn’t need superpowers or a holographic computer named Synergy to have adventures. Planting a garden, befriending someone lonely, these could be life-changing acts. Books have since inspired me to do many awesome things. They turned me into a repository of worlds, characters, and experiences introduced to me through novels, and this has made me a more curious and daring person.
Picture me back then: scrawny, shy, American girl with a Pakistani face and a tragic ill-suited Princess Diana haircut (my mom was a fan). Always, always with a book in her bag. I’ve let go of the shyness, and, mercifully, the Princess Diana haircut, but the book in the bag is a constant.
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ABOUT ZAREEN 
Zareen joined Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in February 2011, where she focuses on commercial and literary young adult and middle grade fiction. Her current list at Books for Young Readers includes New York Times bestselling authors Hilary Duff and Tonya Hurley, as well as a fabulous new series by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian. Prior to Simon and Schuster, Zareen worked at HarperCollins Children’s Books editing bestselling novelists Lauren Conrad, Jodi Lynn Anderson, LJ Smith, and Claudia Gray. Zareen is a graduate of New York University.
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GIVEAWAY
To celebrate Zareen’s post, and since The Secret Garden is one of my favorite books, I am giving away this beautiful Barnes & Noble edition of The Secret Garden, because it is so very pretty (and purple!).
Zareen is ALSO generously giving away . . .
. . . a final hardcover copy of The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls!!!
To win, simply comment below and tell us about your experience with The Secret Garden. Have you read and loved this book? How did it influence you? What are your middle grade memories?
For an extra entry, tweet about this post and include the link to your tweet in your comment.
This giveaway begins now and ends Monday, July 9 at 11:59 a.m. EST. The winner will be announced shortly thereafter. This giveaway is U.S./Canada only.
EDITED 7/23: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner . . .
Joyce!
Thank you to all commenters, and thanks to all who read this post. Stay tuned for more Middle Grade Memories posts and giveaways throughout the summer!
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Love Middle Grade Memories? Check back on Mondays and Wednesdays throughout the summer for more in this series!
You can view previous Middle Grade Memories posts below:
- author Marissa Burt and Where the Red Fern Grows
- author Sarvenaz Tash and The Witches
- author Jay Kristoff and The Hobbit
- author Adam-Troy Castro and Dr. Dolittle
- author Greg Leitich Smith and The Enormous Egg
- librarian Rita Meade and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- author Cristin Terrill and The Baby-Sitters Club
- author Phoebe North and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
- editor Jordan Hamessley and The Egypt Game
- agent Suzie Townsend and The Westing Game
- author Lauren Billings and Howl’s Moving Castle
The Secret Garden is still one of my favorite books. I think it’s one of the first books I read as a girl that made me sad, but that I loved anyway.
I absolutely loved The Secret Garden as a child. I even begged my mother to let me watch the movie. It was just utterly enchanting and captivating. Everything I remember about it is just all the visuals it gave me. Watching the movie was the epitome of this too. My first time with a book to movie interpretation. To be able to actually see this garden, it was just the height of my excitement. One of the few novels that I distinctly remember from being a child.
tweet:
Vivien
deadtossedwaves at gmail dot com
I’m not sure how I made it through life without reading this classic! Zareen-thanks for capturing the magic and beauty. I will put this on the list of books to read with my daughter.
The Secret Garden is a book that I read over and over again, and the film adaptation was a favorite as a kid. Whenever it was on my mom would leave it on for me knowing I love the story. Middle grade books are so incredibly important because they are the gateway for future reading – if there are tales you can lose yourself to while that young, then there must be ones out there as you continually grow and experience new things. It’s because of these books that I branched out into adult novels when I was younger and have been reading ever since!
Since I spent my middle-grade years reading all of Robert A. Heinlein’s juvenile science fiction (Red Planet, Rocket Ship Galileo, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel) books like A Secret Garden were not on my radar. Winning this would give me the perfect opportunity to check that off my bucket list.
Here’s my tweet for extra credit: https://twitter.com/tcanny/status/219814215651819520
Lovely post on a childhood favorite! I can relate to Zareen’s thoughts on South Asia being mentioned in the book. It was thrilling, in very visceral way, when a piece of my world – a world most other kids in my neighborhood had no concept of – was mentioned or explored in a book. And, like Zareen, I was the girl who always had a book in her hand, everywhere she went.
Thanks for making me take a break to wander through The Secret Garden for a bit on this Monday morning…
OH MY GOODNESS, I love this post so much! Finally a middle grade memory book I’ve read, haha. The Secret Garden and The Little Princess were absolute favourites of mine and I remembering falling so deeply in love with the stories. This Planting a garden, befriending someone lonely, these could be life-changing acts. Books have since inspired me to do many awesome things. They turned me into a repository of worlds, characters, and experiences introduced to me through novels, and this has made me a more curious and daring person. rings so true to me. I could relate to Mary so many ways because I was an only child too. I loved seeing her growth! I also remember Scholastic book orders where a key necklace was given with the book. Eep, this makes me want to re-read the book all over again. Thank you so much for sharing.
I loved The Secret Garden. I read it over and over again when I was younger. I think that I loved it so much because I felt like I could totally get lost in it.
My tweet: http://twitter.com/amabe421/status/219895489091485697
I saw the movie first when I was a kid and when I found out it was based on a book I immediately got my hands on a copy. It is one of those stories I can’t ever imagine getting tired of.
throuthehaze at gmail dot com
This is one of my favourite books – I love the gradual changes in Mary’s attitude, and of course, being an anglophile, I loved loved the Englishness of the whole story and setting.
What a sweet story! Thanks for sharing.
I feel happy just seeing the cover.
I was already an avid reader by the time I experienced The Secret Garden when I was 9, but I had never before read a book with so many flawed yet lovable characters, and it stunned me. I fell in love with Colin. I wanted to slap Mary and be her best friend at the same time. I just wanted to hang out and garden with all of them. 
I also became more aware of the fact that some words just sounded cooler than others, and caused quite a few eyebrows to raise when I started referring to unfriendly people as “irascible.”
Love a secret garden! Always made me wish i had a secret place of my own!
Sounds like a really good book. I think my daughter would really enjoy reading it!
A magical book. I don’t distinctly remember reading it, but the story has stuck with me – if that makes sense. When I think of it, my mind goes back to that big house and the roaming estate with the secret garden. Goes to show how great a story it really is.
i really enjoyed the secret garden when i read it in middle school. i love the big house and mysterious garden mary explored and i thought it so romantic and i wanted a big old house mysterious house to explore myself.
Um, this is awesome. That cover/binding for The Secret Garden is gorgeous! And pfft, who wouldn’t want to read your book, Claire? <33
The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books as a kid. I must have read it a hundred times. In fact, I think that repeated reading is one of the things that has inspired me to garden all my life, even though my garden is a collection of pots on the balcony.
I’ve read The Secret Garden more times than I can remember. It’s always been one of my favorite books, and even though it makes me cry every time I always want to read it again and again. I’ve always wanted to have a “secret garden” of my own, and I still hope that I one day will!