Speaker 1: Hello and good morning. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Good morning, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Have you had the opportunity to sit down with a
young reader and just watch them page through this book,
because this is a masterpiece of eyesight as well as storytelling.
I mean you, and it's not over thick, it doesn't
scare a child away. It's so perfect.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you, that's high praise. I have sat down
with some kids and yeah, they always have a lot
to say about the plants.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things. I mean, especially young
adults as well as big adults. We all love plants,
and that's what this book is about. It gives us
the opportunity to go into a moment of exploration. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was one of my favorite things about picture books
as a kid, was like just pouring over a spread
and seeing something different than the last time I read it. So,
you know, I wanted to make sure to tuck in
some things like that.
Speaker 1: And you like to play with the colors too, I mean,
I mean the way that you really kind of design
things out in this book. It just opens up your
imagination to start paying attention to everything around us. It's
not just what we see in our own front.
Speaker 2: Yard, right exactly. And that's funny that you mentioned that
because when I do school visits, that is my big
talking point is that a lot of what I do
as a writer looks like goofing off in my yard
because I'm out there just kind of noticing things, and
that that's what you have to do as a writer,
is pay attention to the world around you and look
closely at things. And so I'm glad that you brought
that up.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you cover inside the book
is that you know astronauts and it's like, I've never
seen a weirdo astronaut. But the thing is, though, is
that we get to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so I mean astronauts are weird. Think about like,
you know, how do you how do you go to
the basterroom in space? Rh right, You know, like astronauts
have a weird life. Scientists have a weird life. And
you know that's again like when I talk to kids,
that's one of the things I tell them, Like the
world is enamored with weirdos because you know, new ideas
are always weird and then they're replicated. So you know,
we love that. We don't like to see things that
are exactly the same all the time, so you know,
be your unrepeatable, unique self.
Speaker 1: I love that because back in two thousand and two,
I released the music album then and the name of
it was they think I'm weird, So I'm going to
prove it. And I just get it, I really do,
because but most people just say he's an artist. He's
an artist.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, now, I'm just weird, right yeah,
And I think you know, so many people hear that
as like a bad thing. But in our home, wonderfully
weird has been a mantra since we became parents, and
I stick by that, like, you are weird and it
is wonderful that you are, and it's not hurting anybody,
and we love to see it.
Speaker 1: The thing that really inspires me about this book is
when she's building the garden and you're showcasing to young
readers that it doesn't just happen. It's going to require
some living, you know, getting the fertilizer, it's going to
require working the soil and creating signs and planting things
that there there's work involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that just came through
kind of organically. Though. I think writing is like that anyways,
you know, like you get to the end and you
have these talks with people and you're like, oh, yeah,
but I'm a gardener myself. So even though her garden
like magically grows overnight, there was still work on the
front end. So yeah, you gotta get a little dirty
to get to the good stuff.
Speaker 1: The way that you name the flowers too, I mean
a glowing jack in the bush, I mean I love
that stuff. And even a grumpy gilly flower.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, which when I, you know, talk to kids,
I show them what an actual gilly flower looks like
and they're like, what does doesn't look anything like a
real gilly flower? But I didn't want it to. I
took a lot of creative liberties with all the flowers
because the publisher was very adamant that none of these
can be real poison plant, so I deviated a lot.
Speaker 1: And the community was kind of against this garden, which
I can relate with because back in nineteen ninety seven,
when I planted seventeen hundred trees inside this forest, people
weren't supportive of what I was doing. They didn't understand
what I was doing. But I mean, I can really
really relate with Millie here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, like she tells the Garden Club
when they say, like, we just can't have this poisonous
mess in our town. According to our rules, it's unacceptable,
she tells them like, it's not poisonous, it's just different
from yours. Yeah, And I think that that resonates with
a lot of people, like what I'm doing is not
hurting you, and I'm actually bringing something kind those like
cool and different to the world. So you know, like
you don't have to like it, you just kind of
have to let me be. And she goes out and
she finds the people that appreciate what she's planted. And
I love that because it gives her agency. You know,
like she doesn't sit around even though her house is
literally and figuratively on the fringe of society. You know,
her house is on the edge of Garden Glynn. She's
not a lonely weirdo. She's a wonderful weirdo who goes
out and finds people who are her same kind of weird.
Speaker 1: I would love to be sitting with a parent who
gets to the page where she's inviting everybody up to
the gates and the word beware is crossed out and
it's behold. I would love to hear how a mother
or a father explains that to a child in the
way of saying, see, you don't have to be afraid.
Just behold it.
Speaker 2: Just behold it. That's right, Like, just give it a chance.
It's you know, we are often scared of things that
are unfamiliar or different. And you know, when they go
through the garden, they don't the kids don't go through
and automatically say like, oh my gosh, it's wonderful. They
they're a little grossed out, they're a little nervous, but
they're also astonished, and by the time they get to
the end of it, they've seen like, hey, this is
actually kind of cool. So you just have to give
things a chance.
Speaker 1: So is there really a plant called a sneezing sticky weed?
Speaker 2: Not a sneezing sticky weed? But all of the plants
in so I gave them all attributes like sneezing, fanged, tentacled.
But fairy moss is real, sticky weed is real. Cansies
are real, gilly flowers, real huckleberries, all of those are real.
But you just don't have belching huckleberries.
Speaker 1: Sadly the book in the garden, it really reminds me
of a place too far from here. We call it
Tom Short Park, and really it's a very nature place
to go. And just just looking at all these you know,
the illustrations and things like that, it just takes me
somewhere as an adult, I just can't imagine what you're
doing with young imaginations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they have so many questions, and you know,
like since I've written this, you know, it was sparked
by a real life poison garden. I read an article
about a real life garden in England. But since then
I've also found out that here in the US we
have like there's a garden and it escapes me where
it is now, but it's an entire carnivorous plant greenhouse.
So you go in this greenhouse and it's nothing but
carnivorous plants, And so I think that's so cool, Like
there are truly wild and weird gardens that kids could
really visit. And so when I tell them that they're
you know, they.
Speaker 1: In a very strange way. Don't you think that your
book can be compared to Mike Mulligan' Steamshovel in the
way of building something from nothing.
Speaker 2: Oh, that is the highest praise I could ever get.
Mary Anne was one of my favorites. Yeah, yeah, because
you know, she moves in on it says at the
beginning of the book, She's moved into this tumble down
house on a scruffy hill at the edge of town.
There's nothing there. It's rejected, it's excluded, and it's unloved.
And Nellie Floor plants her wild and weird garden and
it's it brings something to that scruffy hill, you know,
and she loves it. And so now this thing that
no one had given any attention to is now this
wild and weird, fantastical place. So yeah, she she literally
builds it up from nothing.
Speaker 1: Wow. Where can we go to find out more about
everything that you do? Because I want people to discovery
the entire you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I have a website, It's Christine Manden at
It's Christymanden dot com. And you can find the book
everywhere that books are sold. Independent bookstores are always my
favorite places to find books. And Milli Flour actually has
a second book coming out next summer. So if in
Book one Garden Glenn was afraid of things that are different.
In book two, they're absolutely afraid of the dark, and
so it's called Milli Floor Saves the Night, and she's
going to show Garden Glenn that they're amazing things to
see in the dark if you're only brave enough to
turn out the light.
Speaker 1: Wow, I can't wait to have you back on this
show just so we can talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: Will you'd be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, thanks so much for having me