Millie Fleur's Poison Garden
by Christy Mandin (Author)
Wednesday Addams meets The Curious Garden in this delightfully peculiar story about finding joy in being wonderfully weird.
Garden Glen is a very bland place. Every house and every garden looks exactly like the other. That is... until Millie Fleur La Fae comes to town. Up on a scruffy hill, beside a ramschackle house, Millie Fleur plants her marvelously strange garden, filled with Sneezing Stickyweed, Fanged Fairymoss, and Grumpy Gilliflower. Millie Fleur finds it enchanting, but the townspeople of Garden Glen call it poison! But Millie Fleur is proud of her beloved little garden. So if some townspeople want to be sticks in the mud, she'll take matters into her own hands and find the kindred spirits who appreciate everything the garden has to offer.
Millie Fleur's Poison Garden is a reminder to embrace everything that makes us wonderfully weird. Perfect for readers of The Creepy Carrots and fans of the Addams Family movies.
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Kirkus
No poison here; just a garden of delights about someone who improves things in a unique fashion.
Publishers Weekly
The sign at the entrance to Garden Glen boasts "a picture-perfect place," a phrase that hints at the neighborhood's stifling conformity. But young Millie Fleur--who's vaguely reminiscent of Wednesday Addams in Mandin's measured, sepia-toned digital illustrations--changes all that when she and her mother move into a lone, decrepit gothic house on the edge of town. Pet frog in tow, Millie plants a garden that is gloriously unruly, filled with anthropomorphic plants whose names include "sore toothwort," "tentacled tansy," and "grumpy gillyflower." The town elders declare the garden "poisonous," but Millie rallies her classmates and teacher, who "all agreed... Millie Fleur's garden was wonderfully weird!" The child's example doesn't completely unleash the forces of unconventionality in Garden Glen, but final images depict homeowners expressing themselves, at least in their horticultural pursuits. Millie and her mother are portrayed with pale skin; background characters are shown with various abilities and skin tones. An author's note concludes. Ages 2-6. (July)
Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
Review quotes
Praise for Millie Fleur's Poison Garden:
A girl plants a fantastical idea...This charming, low-key tale celebrates those who unabashedly find unconventional things exciting...No poison here; just a garden of delights about someone who improves things in a unique fashion.—Kirkus Reviews
JUV017030 - Juvenile Fiction | Holidays & Celebrations | Halloween
Gardens
Individuality
JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play
Conformity
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Self-Estee
Dangerous plants
