Beyond the Secret Garden: Children’s Literature and Representations of Black and Racially minoritised People by Darren Chetty and Karen Sands O’Connor,

2025   

 

This is a curated collection of articles, essays and blog posts almost all produced by Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor. A Foreword is provided by Patrtice Lawrence. A bibliography at the end of the book takes up twelve pages. A detailed introduction tells us a little about how the book is meant to work and what its ethos is. This is followed by a useful discussion of the terms used: racially minoritised, Black, BAME, BME, People of Colour and Ethnicity.

The central premise of this book is that children who belong to the groups described above deserve to be able to read about people who look like them. Chetty and Sands-O’Conner go beyond this group, however. They also look at literature that includes the classical portrayal of such groups, dehumanisation through anthropomorphism, characters form the former colonies and Black, Jewish, Asian, African and LBTQ+ children.

The majority of the articles are form Books for Keeps and Sands-O’Connor’s blog The Race to Read though there are a few from other publications and by other writers. It is certainly refreshing to see a blog being taken seriously and deemed a useful resource.         

The cover says it all: white middle class classical characters enjoy a garden very similar to the one at Misselthwaite Manor, created by Frances Hodgson Burnett (the Secret Garden, 1911)  whilst the characters defined at the beginning of the book – and a few others -  labour outside, try to get into the garden and protest that ‘Representation Matters’.

This book is very readable even for the lay person as each article is short and written in plain English. 

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Looking for Alaska by John Green

2012  

 

Miles Halter is sent to a boarding tertiary college. He is a shy young man who is fascinated by the last words of famous people. His father attended the same college and Miles has much to live up to: his father gained top marks and was also a quitter a rebel and trouble maker. Pranks were the order of the day.   

He tries to fit in and is befriended by other teens who smoke, drink and are pretty good at pranks. He learns how to join in. This includes Alaska Young.

Alaska is a feisty young woman who lives on the edge and is also a huge fan of literature. She seems incredibly confident but she has the impression that she always messes up.

And then she really messes up big time. It takes her friends a while to realise that she left abruptly one evening because she had forgotten to put flowers on her mother’s grave. She always blames herself for her mother’s death, and believes that her father does too: as a young child she wasn’t able to call 911 when her mother collapsed at home. Other mistakes in life, she believes, stem from that one incident.

She is over the limit when she sets off and crashes her car into a stationery police car that is attending the site of an overturned lorry.

The head teacher of the school followed her and reported that she didn’t even swerve. It could have been suicide. That is never fully established.

Whatever has happened, the friends she’s left behind will never be the same again.  

John Green really gets into the minds of these young adult and in particular into Miles’s.  

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The Space In Between by Jen Minkman

2017 

upper secondary, tertiary, Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5, ages 14 -17, Minkman Jen, YA, New Adult, supernatural, time slip, relationships,      

This book is set in Bangor, a place I know well. Moira is studying fine art there as a part-time student.

She, her twin sister and her brother get on unusually well. 

Moira has a controlling boyfriend and the story is partly about this.

There is a strong relationship with the paranormal and this is quite appropriate for North Wales - a place of mystery, intrigue and old legends.  

Moira has to make some difficult choices and a time-slip element also kicks in. She is able to make the right choice and this saves a person she has begun to love. Ironically in choosing her course of action she has cut herself from any further romance.

The book is of an average length for new adult / young adult.    

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Never Thought I’d End Up Here by Ann Liang

 

Never Thought I’d End Up Here is an uplifting rom-com for teen / young adult readers. 

 

Leah makes a faux-pas at her cousin’s wedding because her mastery of her second language is not as it should be: she wishes the couple a disastrous marriage. Mother and aunt decide something must be done and she is sent on a trip that will not only deepen her knowledge of Chinese culture but will also improve her language skills.

 

And who should be on that trip but her nemesis, Cyrus.  

 

The story is told in first person and Leah teases us a little. We know that she has been expelled from one school but we only find out why about half way through the book. We know that she suddenly quits modelling but are only told why much later. It’s clear that she really dislikes Cyrus but again it is a long time before she actually tells us why. Also a mystery is why exactly she changed so much after she was expelled. All of this keeps us reading.

 

Ann Liang draws her characters well. We grow to love Leah even though we might be a little irritated that she insists on wearing high heels when trainers would have been a much better option. Leah is the main character but we may also become fond of Daisy, Leah’s timid roommate,  Cyrus who is quite complex, the handsome and flirtatious Oliver, Cyrus’s roommate, the strict and slightly stressed teacher, and Leah’s mother and aunt, both of whom are feisty but caring women.

 

There is plenty of plot and a plethora of sub-plots that hurtle towards a very satisfying end as relationships and attitudes change. 

 

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Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing