Flower

Sylvia Pantaleo is an associate professor of education, specializing in
children’s literature, at the University of Victoria. She is the
co-author of Learning with Literature in the Canadian Elementary
Classroom.

Thirteen-year-old Katie is sent off to visit her grandparents in Halifax
while her father and pregnant stepmother travel to London for a holiday.
Katie is disgruntled over the changes in her family and her only solace
seems to be in the upcoming school production of The Secret Garden.
Katie is determined to play the part of Mary Lennox.

In her grandparents’ old Victorian house, Katie is visited by the
ghost of a girl. Readers know that the ghost is Lillie Bridges, an
English orphan who came to Canada a hundred years earlier as a home
child. Lillie’s story is told through chapters interspersed with
Katie’s contemporary story. Coincidentally, when Lillie sailed to
Canada she met William Carr, Katie’s great-grandfather, on board ship.
Eventually, Lillie and William met up again in Canada, fell in love, and
married. Thus, the ghost is Katie’s great-grandmother.

Several narrators are employed to tell the novel’s stories within
stories. Unfortunately, the plot suffers from contrivance and relies on
numerous coincidences, including the grandparents buying the house that
Lillie worked in. Lillie’s story could have been recounted through her
chapters and letters as opposed to adding a supernatural dimension.
Indeed, the historical aspects of the book, the most engaging with
respect to plot and character development. Katie’s experiences in
Halifax and her situation at home seem to be unconnected; at the end of
her Halifax visit, Katie returns home with a much more positive outlook
and everything ends “happily.” Not a first-choice purchase.