Filled with unusual characters, this tale of a girl who discovers a hidden room in her uncle's strange houseNa garden with a tragic secretNis inspired by the classic "The Secret Garden."
Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life. As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth. Despite the best efforts of her uncle's assistants, Roo discovers the house's hidden room-a garden with a tragic secret. Inspired by The Secret Garden, this tale full of unusual characters and mysterious secrets is a story that only Ellen Potter could write. Read the Q&A with Ellen Potter from Publisher's Weekly on writing a novel inspired by The Secret Garden By Sally Lodge
Jan 12, 2011 In 2003, Ellen Potter made a lively splash onto the scene with her middle-grade novel Olivia Kidney. She went on to write three sequels about that enchantingly quirky heroine, as well as two other novels, Slob and The Kneebone Boy. Most recently, the author tapped into memories of her own childhood reading to pen The Humming Room, a novel inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Set in a mansion-a former children's tuberculosis sanitarium-on an island in the St. Lawrence River, the story centers on Roo, a prickly orphan who goes to live with her aloof uncle, and befriends Phillip, his troubled son, and Jack, a local boy. Potter talks about how this novel took shape. Is it safe to assume that The Secret Garden was an important book to you as a child? Obviously, I loved the novel as a kid. What really struck me was that when I went back to read it as an adult, the story not only held up, but I discovered elements in it I had never noticed before. It felt very fresh, and surprisingly layered in a way I hadn't realized as a child. Was that an unusual reaction for you to hav