Millie Fleur's Poison Garden

I was looking for a good book present the other day, and I...I might have bought one for myself instead... Oops? Here's Christy Mandin's "Millie Fleur's Poison Garden."

["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 and her mom move to a pretty, pastel town where every house and every garden are identity (think Edward Scissorhands), but they're not so pink themselves. Add to that, they move into the "tumbledown house on a scruffy hill at the edge of town. Rejected and excluded, it stood lifeless with no one to love it" (think Addams Family). 

After Millie plants some things in her garden, seeds from her old garden at her old house, she starts to feel much happier and much more at home...until the people in town see what she thinks is pretty. 

This book teaches people (not just kids) that just because it's not your cup of tea (not your rose bush) doesn't mean you can hate on it or attempt to ban it. Millie, with her mother's encouragement, stood strong behind her beloved plants, even if they had silly names and looked odd.

I loooooved this book. One of my bigger tattoos is a bouquet of gorgeous flowers that just so happen to be poisonous. Some of the flowers in Millie's garden are real (just illustrated dramatically) and some are cleverly imaginary. They're all beautifully done and utterly adorable (and totally tattoo-worthy).

This book was partially inspired by the Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle. If you've never heard of it, research it; it's glorious (and toooootally on my bucket list). 

Quote of the Day: "Your garden is different from anything they've seen before. Some people are scared of things that are different."

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