Episode 69: The Secret Garden Keys to Unlocking Your Imagination with Biographer and Author Angelica Carpenter

Why Listen? In my journal practice, I write down what I call “heart taps”, which are the things that speak directly to my heart. Here are a few of the heart tap moments that I wrote down from this interview with ANGELICA CARPENTER:

****HEART TAPS FROM THIS EPISODE****

• It's up to you to create flowers out of the weeds of your life! Like FHB, we have the ability to use our imagination to see our lives as flourishing garden of possibility and wonder.
• Imagination is the spice of life and needs to be well-tended beyond our youth to be able to flourish.
• Everybody needs a Secret Garden in their life, a place those offers respite and safety from the harshness of life.
• Legacy is the love and joy we put into the world that transcends our time here. It forges connections beyond our wildest hopes and dreams.
• When you find a thing you love, like The Secret Garden, pass it along! Joy is best enjoyed when it's shared.
• And lastly, I'm so grateful to people like Angelica Carpenter whose biography work help preserve the legacy of my great-great grandmother's books as some of the most beloved in the world.

Join me (Keri Wilt) on the Well-Tended Life as I sit down with Angelica Carpenter, a biographer of my great great grandmother Frances Hodgson Burnett, for an enriching conversation. We talk about the legacy of Frances Hodgson Burnett, explore the powerful role of imagination, humor and joy in her work, and discuss Angelica's new children's book. Listen in for heartwarming stories, insights on cultivating imagination, and more!

CHECK OUT HER NEW BOOK: The Secret Gardens of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Secret gardens, hidden gates, flowering passageways. A picture book biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett's winding and captivating life. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett―best known for writing The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and The Little Princess―had a difficult childhood, losing her father when she was very young and moving with her family from England to Tennessee in hopes of a better life.

She’d been making up stories her entire life but didn’t try to write professionally until she was a teenager to help feed her family. Her first submissions to a magazine were published and she eventually became well known all over the world. 

This is Hodgson Burnett’s life story, told in lyrical prose evoking some of the same magic of her own stories.

THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT GIFT FOR ANY CHILD AT HEART THIS CHRISTMAS! And check out the fun letter from me in the back of each copy. 

Angela Carpenter Bio:
Working with Keri Wilt and her mother Penny Deupree, Angelica Shirley Carpenter has published three books about Frances Hodgson Burnett. The first, written with her mother Jean Shirley, is a middle-grade biography, Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden (Lerner, 1990). In 2002 Angelica hosted the first-ever conference about Burnett which resulted in an anthology, In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett (Scarecrow, 2006). Her picture book, The Secret Gardens of Frances Hodgson Burnett was illustrated by Spanish artist Helena Pérez Garcia (Bushel & Peck, 2024).

Her other books include biographies of L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. In 2025 Lerner will publish her young adult biography Arm in Arm: The Grimké Sisters' Fight for Abolition and Women's Rights.

Angelica was the founding curator for the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Books at California State University, Fresno. She is also a past president of the International Wizard of Oz Club. She lives in Fresno.

Connect with Angela Carpenter:

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The Well-Tended Life with Keri Wilt, Ep.  , The Secrets of The Secret Garden with Biographer and Author Angelica Carpenter

(Introduction with Keri Wilt, Host:)
Hey friends, welcome to The Well-Tended life podcast. What is a Well-Tended life? Well, let me start by telling you what it is not.  A Well-Tended life is not a set it and forget it life, nor is it a perfect life. It is though, a life that is worked on every day in the sunshine and through the storms.

And the truth is what worked in our life gardens last year may not work in the next. Yeah. That's why here at the Well Tinted Life podcast, we're interviewing people who have grown and bloomed true in a variety of seasons, and who are willing to share their well tinted wisdom and bead whacking advice with us. Listen in.

 
Keri Wilt, Host: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Well-Tended Life podcast. I'm your host, Keri Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who is on a mission to help you and me grow through any season. Today's episode is inspired by a quote from The Secret Garden, which says, 'Sometimes she stopped digging to look at the garden and try to imagine what it would be like when it was covered with thousands of lovely things in bloom'.

Now, I'm wondering, when was the last time you used your imagination? It's a powerful tool, friends, but many of us think of it as a childish thing, make believe or imaginary friends.  My great grandmother, Francis Hodgson Burnett, began using her imagination at an early age and never really stopped.

She would say to the weeds, you are roses, you are violets and hyacinths and daffodils and snowdrops. You are. And today's special guest, Angelica Carpenter knows more than a little bit about my great grandmother and her prolific imagination. As she is one of her biographers, and I just can't wait to see what well-tended wisdom she has share with us today. Let's dig in.

Welcome Angelica!

Angelica Carpenter, Host: Thank you so much.

Keri: I'm so excited about this. I don't know if you know this, but this is the first time I have ever interviewed one of Francis's biographers.

Angelica: Oh, really?

Keri: Yes.

Angelica: About time.

Keri: I know, right?  I started the podcast, honestly, when the movie was coming out. So, I got to interview all of the directors and the stars of the latest movie and things like that. And I've always had it on my list to interview each one of you. I just haven't gotten around to it. So, I am so excited about this conversation. And our new project, the coolest children's book ever I think right now on the market, but we'll get to that in a hot minute. But tell people like a little bit more about yourself. 

Angelica: Okay I was born in St. Louis, Missouri moved around a lot as a child ended up going to library school and becoming a librarian and for 15 years  in the 80s.

In the 90s, I was a director of a small public library in Florida, and then in 1999, I got a job here in Fresno, California, as curator of a new children's literature collection, the Arnie Nixon Study for the Children of, for the Study of Children's Literature. As we talk about how I got into Francis, I'll go into more detail, but I've always been a reader.

I don't know why I didn't think about being a librarian until I got to my 30s, but finally the knowledge kicked in and I went to library school and that's clearly my dream job. And I love the public library, but I was always interested in children's books and even while I was working.

Public library director, writing children's books with my mother. So to have this job, to be in charge of a children's literature collection was like a dream come true. And I did that for 15 years too. 

Keri: What is it about children's book that you think that draws you in there?

Angelica: I come from a family of readers. I mean, big readers and I don't even remember learning to read. It happened so easily in first grade. They didn't have kindergarten when I went to school. By second grade, I could read Oz books. And we didn't get a television until I was in second grade.

I was already reading. Everything I could get my hands on by then and even when we got the TV, I was always reading while I watched TV and I'm still living the exact same way. Okay. I'm just a prolific reader. Of course, when I was a child, it was children's literature that I was reading and a lot of old books that belong to my great grandmother and great aunt, like The Little Colonel and Dottie Dimple.

And I don't know if they had The Secret Garden. I don't think they did, but like old series books, Patty books. Okay. Okay. As I said, we moved a lot. So, my sister and I would sometimes read like every book in the children's department of a new library, and then we'd move. She's still a big reader, too.

My father read all the time. My mother read. It just came naturally.

Keri: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. You grew up a reader became a librarian.

Then when did you start writing books? Like when did you make that flip? Because my gut says most librarians have a secret dream to write a book. Do you think that's true or am I just making that up? 

Angelica: I think most of us have a secret dream to run a bookstore. Oh, I started writing. I was running this library in Florida and my mother had been writing and publishing all my life. Okay. And she'd written children's biographies.

So when she retired from her public relations job in St. Louis, she moved to Florida to live near me. And that was the first time we had lived together in the same town. Since I went to college, so it's like a 20 year gap where we had not lived in the same town  and she had decided that we were going to start writing books together  and.

I resisted her for a while.  What made her think this was, she worked at Washington University in St. Louis and on her lunch hour, she'd go over to the library and poke around in the rare books room and she found a copy of the one I knew the best of all, which was Francis's autobiography of her childhood and mother loved that book and she went back lunch hour after lunch hour and she spent dime after dime and she photocopied the entire book.

And when she moved to Florida, she brought it with her. And she said, Angelica, you have got to read this book. And I said, mother,  I have my own reading to do. I don't want to read this book. No, you've got to read this book. So two years later, I finally gave in and read the book. And I always tell people mother knows best.

Okay. It was a terrific book. And it was her idea that it would be a good basis for a biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett, which it was, and we wrote, and it was also her idea we were going to write books together.  And at that point, I realized I had always been writing, although I had not thought about writing books, but if I was in a club, I was always the secretary, or I was always the newsletter editor, or, I wrote lots of letters to my friends and family, and I was writing all the time, but I didn't think of myself as a writer.

But mother. Thought I was going to be a writer. She trained me to be a writer and she was so kind. She knows how extremely bossy I am and she let me be the boss. Okay. She let me take the lead in writing this book.  So together we wrote it and it took a while. It took a year, but we sold it and that's how I got started.

Keri: So Francis was your first book.

Angelica: My first book. Yeah. Not hers, but mine.

Keri: Wow.

Angelica: And this was a middle grade biography published by Lerner Publications. It's a beautiful book. It got a starred review in School Library Journal, which was like a happy day, and they printed 5000 more that day. It was just so much fun, and we really enjoyed it.

We'd go around to the classrooms together and give talks and my mother would dress up like Frances Hodgson Burnett and wear a robin on her hat.  It really gave us something wonderful to do at the end of her life too. It was really nice. Our second book was Al Frank Baum and we were both big fans.

Osfan. So that was a lot of fun, too.

Oh, my goodness. And I forgot this. I mean, the beginning about me and Francis, it really was one of my favorite books as a child. It was one of my mother's favorite books when she was a child, too. So, I can't even remember the first time I read it when I was 12 and in 7th or 8th grade, I guess 7th.

I went to church camp. This was in Omaha, Nebraska,  and it was a camp for junior and senior high kids. So I was like the youngest. One of the youngest people there, and I know I was the absolute most homesick person there. Okay. I had never been away from my mother for more than a night at a time, and I just was miserable.

And I guess it was four or five nights. I don't know. Anyway, I survived. And when I came home, I dug out my copy of The Secret Garden, which I had read. Already several times I took it out on the front porch, and I read the whole book from cover to cover that day and there's just something about that book.

It has a healing power. It had It came out in 1911, and people said that about it and I'm telling you this thing that happened to me was in the 50s And people are still telling me today. That book has a power.

Keri: And I think it is I always encourage whenever I give a talk or do a zoom thing that I always encourage people to pass that book on because it is, it's a place to go as much as it is a book, right?

Like diving in. Secret Garden creates this safe space. And the same thing I've heard it over and over again. Of I grew up in an abusive household and I would go out back and I would sit underneath the tree, and I would read the secret garden and that's the place I could go to get away.

And I'm sure you felt it was like probably reading the secret garden was like coming back home,  coming back to yourself, coming back to that place that felt safe. Safe and good and everybody needs a secret garden in their heart. Like they need a place to go when things get hard because we're not promised an easy life and the world is crazy and life is hard and things are stressful.

And shelter and a refuge, it is a shelter and a refuge and it's crazy. And I think. I don't know. Do you think Francis consciously created that? 

Angelica: Wow, I don't know. Speak, I'm, I write, and I do consciously use techniques, especially fictional techniques like cliffhanger endings and chapters or the rule of three.

I do that consciously, but I do it subconsciously too. And I'm sure she did that same thing.  I think she, she thought these stories came to her.  I think he was a terrific writer, too. So whatever came to her, she fine tuned it to make it what it was.

Keri: But I think I also think that. With the fact that book was written so late in her lifetime that it was like, oh, like she's shoved all those like beautiful nuggets into it that I feel like she learned along the way.

And I believe in, I know we know from what she's written and all of the things that, that the garden was a healing place for her. It was what helped her like deal with the grief of losing her son and the divorces and all of the things. And so I, yeah, consciously or subconsciously, I think she did create a shelter and a safe space.

Angelica: I mean, I think that's the theme of the book and I have no doubt but she knew the theme of the book. Yeah. 

Keri: Yep. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Okay. I feel like we're already talking about this, but I'm so curious what are the, what are your favorite things about Francis that you carry with you in your heart?

What are the stories when people say tell me about Francis. Which are your favorites to tell? I know I have three favorites to tell, but I know that when you say, I worked on this book, this, the author of The Secret Garden, blah, blah, blah, that people are like, 'Oh my gosh, tell me more!'

Angelica: So, what is it they are, they're usually, if I'm addressing a group, I tell 'em, hold up your hand. Was if the secret garden was your favorite book when you were young, and I always get a response and I say, hold up your hand. If you read it more than once, and it's pretty much the same people. They don't just read it once.

They read it more than once too,  but that's not answering your question. Yes. Of course, I love The Secret Garden. I mean, that's my absolute favorite.  I love A Little Princess. Actually, I read Sarah Crewe, which is the earlier version of that, when I was quite young. My mother had a beautiful old copy of that I still have.

Later on in life, when I, I was older, a kid, I was reading A Little Princess, and I'm thinking this is very familiar.  But I love that story where she lives up in the attic, and, the monkey comes in, and I just that's The Secret Garden is much more realistic, I think. A little princess is just like when you're a little girl, you just dream something like that.

And I mean, I had a perfectly nice life. I didn't have to live in the attic and be a servant, but  it was easy to imagine that kind of hardship. And, of course, in her children's books,  pretty much, they always have a happy, that the  protagonist is going to go through some hard times, but then there are happy endings.

And then I love some of her adult books too, especially, I just reread A Fair Barbarian.  It's just such a charming story about this American girl who comes to visit her aunt, who she's never met before. She lives in America with her father, but she comes to visit her aunt in England in the town of Slowbridge.

So I love Francis's sense of humor in naming this town Slowbridge. And this young woman, I think her name's Octavia, she just shakes up the whole town of Slowbridge, just does the most outrageous things like wears diamonds in the daytime. And so, I just really appreciate Francis's sense of humor there, also even in a little princess.

When it's all ending and she's gotten together with the Sarah's gotten together with the Indian gentleman, and I guess he summons Miss Minchin the evil boarding school.  Principle over and they have a little talk and there's one, the inline was and it's pretty certain this Miss Minchinn was not very happy with the talk.

Very understated, and wry humor there that he's. Funny. She is. 

Keri: She is funny. One of my favorites for me, one of my favorite stories to tell others when they ask about Francis and things is the story about how a little princess was told several different times, right? It was told through Sarah Crew, like you were talking about, and then it got retold as the play and then it got retold as A Little Princess.

And the letter that she wrote in the front of a little princess for that very first copy is- is hysterical because she basically berates characters that don't come to her in time for not, I mean, she basically says it's your own fault. If you wanted to be in this book, then you should have shown up on time, but you showed up late. And so I'm going to get in there.

Angelica: And she's got to go back and read that again.

Keri: Oh, it's so funny. I'll have to get you a copy of it. Cause of course it's not in, it was only in the first edition. It was her letter basically explaining why this was a third, like why that, where did this came from and what happened?

And really there, I can't, I don't know of any other author that's gotten to rewrite their book three times.

Angelica: I'm gonna try and think of one, but no, I don't know.

Keri: I don't know of any. And she got the opportunity, which I'm sure a lot of fictional writers would love is, cause everybody says art is never finished, right?

A book is never finished. I'm sure, all writers go back and think about, oh, I should have written this, or I wish I would have done that. And she got a chance to let it evolve over time. 

Angelica: A lot of people are doing it the other way now. A lot of successful writers who write for adults are putting out young adult versions, usually of non-fiction.

And even Lewis Carroll did that. After he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he put out a nursery edition of that was much shorter and made aimed at younger children. So, it's not unheard of, but three times, that's a

Keri: Yeah, three times is a lot.

Angelica: I never read Fauntleroy until I was an adult.  And it just was compelling.

I mean, I was surprised how much I like that, yeah, I like to see people get what they deserve. 

Keri: One of my favorite quotes, and I can't remember I mean, I know Francis wrote it but I think it's in in Gretchen's biography. She says, Francis basically says I've tried to write as much happiness into the world as possible.

And -and that's true pretty much, I think every book she has a happy ending of some sort. 

Angelica: And I think maybe that was because her own life wasn't always so happy, and she created just, I mean, just as we readers enter that world that she created it for herself too. In fact, I do it, I feel like writing biographies is like time travel.

And when I get really absorbed in something it's hard to come out of it and go back into the modern world, because I'm so wrapped up in what Victorians wore under their clothes and whatever else I'm doing that day, so,  I think she created a hap-happiness in her books that she wants, she tried very hard to create in her own life, but to lose a son-

And I don't think she was ever satisfied romantically. I mean, she just had bad luck with men. So sure. What her life maybe wasn't what she would have dreamed of as a young woman, but her books must, I mean, she didn't even think she'd be a writer when she was that young. So to have that kind of success was, it was a different kind of success and a different kind of happiness than she may have anticipated.

Keri: Oh, for sure.

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(Episode Resumes:)
Keri: Okay, let's switch gears for a minute and talk about your new book. I mean, when did you write the first one? The first one came out in 1990. Okay. And at that time that was before the internet, so we had to write, we wrote, and Anne Thwaite's book was out.

Okay, so that was our main resource. And also, Constance Buell, who's your My-my great grandmother, yes. But there weren't a lot of books about Frances at that time, so we wrote to places where she had lived, to libraries, museums, historical societies, and people wrote back to us. And some big libraries like, I don't know, Princeton pulled the catalog cards out of there because there was no online library catalog at that time.

They would make copies of their catalog cards so we could see what they had in their collections that we might want to borrow. So that is how we got started with that book. Then the 2nd book came out in 2006 was based on a conference that I put on here as a children's literature curator.

I put it on a conference about Francis, nobody. I was the 1st person to have that job, and nobody really knew what a children's literature curator would do. And I didn't either. So, I just made it up as I went along. And I thought Francis Hodgson Burnett's one of my favorite writers. Let's have a conference about her. And it turned out there had never been one. And we had people oh, I forgot. I'm losing my thread of thought here. The librarians in the first instance are who put us in touch with your mother.  Somebody, I think, maybe from Princeton wrote and said, would you like to be in touch with Francis Hodgson Burnett's great granddaughter?

Of course, we would so mother eventually went to Dallas and met your mother, Penny Dupree and Penny helped us with books with photos for that first book. And I mean, that's the start of a long-time friendship. And the second book was based on this conference where Anne Thwaite, Francis's first biographer, and Gretchen Holbrook Gorzina,  another major biographer, and Penny Dupree, your mother, all came and spoke.

And Penny even brought Some little Lord Fauntleroy suits that had belonged to her grandfather. It was the inspiration for that character. And people came from New Zealand and Japan and Ireland. I mean, it amazed me. Okay? It really was amazing. And from that, we put together an anthology of essays based mostly on the conference talks called In The Garden Essays in Honor of Francis Hodgson Burnett.

So meanwhile, I'm writing other books too. Okay. And especially about Lewis Carroll and Al Frank Baum and Robert Louis Stevenson, for example. And I noticed that there are picture books about all these people. Okay, but there's no picture book about Francis Hodgson Burnett. So I, who better than me to write one?

Although that wasn't really my thing at the time. So, I wrote, oh, I don't know, I pitched that book up to a lot of people. I got an agent during this time, and she pitched it to I guess it got turned down by a lot of publishers. But finally, Bushel and Peck, which just happens to be here in Fresno, picked it up and it's doing really well.

I mean, it just came out in July, so we don't know any figures yet, but it's a beautiful book. I mean, first of all, they made the most beautiful looking book you could ever imagine. It has a keyhole cutout on the front cover. That's the book designer, who's the publisher, David Miles. And then it has these beautiful pictures by Helena Perez Garcia, who's a Spanish artist.

Somebody, I did this bookstore signing last week and somebody told me that the illustrations were magnetic.  And I think that's really true. They're just so vivid and bright. They draw you in. And then I got lucky and I had the great granddaughter of Francis Hodgson Burnett write,  we didn't know what you were going to write, but an afterword about  Whatever you wanted, okay?

And when it came David Miles, this book designer, incorporated it into the keyhole design to give some keyhole notes about how you can use your imagination. And  honestly, it just came out beautiful. Nothing to do with me how it looked. I mean, I think the words, I wrote the words in the book, but it's a beautiful book.

Keri: It is a gorgeous book. It is the perfect gift for any secret garden lover, adult or child alike. It is It's a work of art itself for sure. But it is it blew my mind when I, when it arrived. It's so gorgeous and y'all at home, you're going, okay, I have no idea, but don't worry when this publishes, you will have a link to all of this in the show notes so you can go buy one for yourself because you're going to want to buy it for every girl, for Christmas and all the holidays.

But let me ask you this: So, as you go to write this biography before you, -'cause you wrote it before you pitched it, right?

Angelica: Oh yeah. I mean, after they bought it, we rewrote it extensively, but yeah, it's your book.

It's so short. You have used the whole text.

Keri: Okay. I wondered. Okay. So, my question would be, why did you focus? on her imagination. There's so many things about Francis. Like, how did that become the thread that you pulled all the way through? Versus, for example Francis broke so many barriers for women, right?

I mean, she was the highest paid author at the time. She, Was the first woman to speak at the the men's author club in England, all sorts of barriers that she broke. What made you decide on imagination? 

Angelica: I'm trying to think is her son, Vivian wrote a biography of her called The Romantic Lady, subtitle that the life story of an imagination.

I think maybe it is, or else the one I knew the best of all.  Is all about imagination too. So yeah, those are 2 very influential books for me as I studied Francis Hodgson Burnett, always thinking about our education and then it's a trend now in picture books to have this 1 idea that carries you through the book.

And I have to say, David Miles, my publisher, really focused on this imagination idea and encouraged me to develop that and helped me to develop that. So I think he made the book a lot stronger by doing that. Not that I wasn't already headed for imagination, but I have it. I mean, you have it begin with her with imagining tigers in her garden and to have her end.

Writing The Secret Garden, just, she did. Her imagination is what got her through everything that she did. I think that was the right choice.

Keri: Oh, it's so good. It's so good. What's great about this book too is like the child who's reading it is learning not just about Francis, but about themselves along the way too, right?

Angelica: Oh that's the other reason you want to give your child reader something that they can hang on to and say, wait a minute. I have an imagination. You know what, maybe I'm not going to write a book. Maybe I'm going to build bridges or maybe I'm going to be a famous swimmer, but I can imagine that.

And that's where your prompts in the back of the book, I think, help children to think about what they could do and to find ways to think about their imagination and how they can use it.  It's. 

Keri: It's so good. Yeah. So, I wrote in the back, a little blurb called how to cultivate your imagination now.

And when you grow up a letter from Fannie's family and Fannie is what she was called when she was younger. That was her name when she very first started going.  And it's actually interesting the other side of the family. So  my great grandmother's. Let's see here.

Yeah. My great grandmother's her daughter in law's side of the family. They all still call her Fanny. Like when they, Fanny or Aunt Fluffy. Those are the two things they refer to her as whereas for some reason, my mother adopted FHB. And I think my mom has always said Growing up, there were three kids in the house and three dogs.

And mom was just like, I don't have time for three names. So, she was just, she was like, I can barely remember everybody else's name. So, she was like, FHB is it is. So, isn't that funny? But yeah, because really Francis. And I wrote this, she made it a practice to use her imagination throughout her life to turn weeds into wildflowers, to make hard things like moving and adventure, to change her dreary surroundings from gray to green, to face challenges and changes, to throw parties and spread joy, to empathize with the poor near her homes.

To make friends with a Robin to deal with sad things and celebrate glad things to break down walls and open doors for other women to walk through and to plan her spring gardens in the dead of winter. But so many times, like we, we quit using our imaginations as we get older. 

Like, why do you think that is?

Angelica: I mean, you do get caught up in life with three kids and three dogs and now you've got phones and social media, and most women work. I think sometimes people just feel like they're struggling and keep their heads above water and feed people and get food on the table. So that's not a particularly imaginative way to live.

I'll tell you what. I'm in a critique group where I'm the oldest one. The other ones are younger than I am, and it just happens. Richard and I live here in Fresno, but we don't have any close relatives who live right here. Our closest relatives are 4 hours away in San Francisco, but the people in my critique group mostly have lived here longer and they have children and grandchildren and all kinds of family all around so they like to go on writing retreats where we go to a cabin up in the mountains or sometimes one of them has a beach house we go over to the beach house and they're all just thrilled that they get this free time to write and just devote to their writing and for me, it doesn't matter because I have free time at home.

I live with Richard. He's very quiet. And I don't really need to go away to be able to have a quiet time to write. But that's because of where I am in life. And the fact that we don't have family here. 

Keri: It's interesting when I need to find my creativity, when I need to focus on creating something I will go to a coffee shop in a neighboring town where nobody knows me, but I'm stimulated by the newness of the environment, the quietness of it, the just all of it.

And I, I understand the draw to a retreat of some sort. And I know not everybody can do that. Not everybody can rent a cabin in the woods. But finding that quiet in a busy life, I think is key. 

Angelica: It is. It really is. And I, because I'm retired. And because my husband is a neat freak and loves to do the housework and won't let me do the laundry because he doesn't think I'll do it right.

So he pretty much runs the house. And, that's very handy too. If you can, he didn't, he wasn't like that when I married him, but 56 years later he really takes care of me while I'm writing too. So that's a great thing.

Keri: I love that. You married well.

Angelica: Yeah.

Keri: You married well. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So, who do you hope reads this and what do you hope that they learn or do differently after reading it?

Angelica: I have already had a couple of people, librarians, older people tell me, oh, I forgot she wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. Yes, I mean, that might be 1 result as it revives interest. My, my publisher, I guess his father was crazy about Little Lord Fauntleroy and they watched the movie every Christmas.

So there weren't many people like that. It's unusual, but basically, I just hoped that it would be a book about a writer so that children understand the struggles of a writer. And what it means, I have a granddaughter who's 10 and so it's been really fun to be writing this book with her and she understands what it means, or I had all these little neighbors across the street and I gave them the book and one, one of them was in first grade said, you're famous, your name's on the cover, but maybe kids don't know what writers do, yeah, and maybe kids don't think about, I mean, she did have a hard life in her youth and she got through it by using her imagination.

So that's what I hope is. And then the theme of gardens is always appealing to everybody. Or that's what people, my reviews say that  say, the theme of gardening is always welcome and in lifting also I hope that very young children will like the story the way it is, in the book, but there's a lot of back matter that I think will be of interest to adults too. There's a timeline there's more information about Francis Hodgson and the controversies that her work h, has occasion -recently- there's annotated bibliography of some of her books that people have probably never heard of. And then there's your good advice about, How to use your imagination. So I think it works on a lot of levels.

And I think a child who's very young will enjoy the story the first time around, but then later on in life may find some of this back matter interesting too. Oh, absolutely. They better go out and read The Secret Garden. Okay, they better do it.

Keri: I hope so. I hope it you know for sure it inspires people who may have also maybe just watched the movie pick up the actual book, or maybe have just seen the musical and maybe they'll actually pick up the book again. My, my goal always is just to make sure that her story gets continued, is continued to be told for generations to come. I mean, I feel like it's it has lasted this long, and I believe it will continue to last your generations, but we all have our role to play in that, right?

As readers like we, if we want the book that we've just read and we love. To continue to grow. You got to pass it on to somebody else. You got to tell somebody else about it. You got to buy them the book.

Angelica: I think that at this bookstore signing I did last Saturday, people were buying my book and they wanted to buy hardback copies of the secret garden and the bookstore sold out.

(Cultivate U Ad Break:)
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(Episode resumes)

Angelica: I have another story about the secret garden to tell you. This was in the book about the conference, but when I moved to Fresno 25 years ago, I met this man who was teaching English as a second language to Hmong immigrants. And H M O N G, these are people from Laos who came here after the Vietnam War.

So Fresno and Minneapolis are the two main places where Hmong people settled. This man, teaching English as a second language, inherited a class that had already started, somebody else had been teaching it and had to quit for some reason, and they hired this guy, Richard Motes, and so he had always planned to use children's books, because that's a good way to teach people English and have pictures and stuff, and he had some picked out, but when he got there, he found out, and these were all men and boys, by the way, They were reading The Secret Garden.

So, he said he was just shocked. First of all, it's a girly story, he thought, maybe that wouldn't interest them. And secondly, there's all that Yorkshire dialect in there, but it didn't matter. They loved the book because of the garden and because they could identify with making a home in a completely, I mean, Fresno, California, is about as different from since, you can get planning a garden and growing a garden.

And they were, by the way, doing that, they had a community garden they were working in. So, isn't that a great story? Isn't that a Testament to Francis?

Keri: I love that. I often get messages from people saying this was one of the books I used to learn English. And I had one probably just maybe a few weeks ago.

Somebody said they finally got one in their native language, and they cried when they received it. Like it was special to them. Often and you're right, mainly it's women who get all crazy, giddy, excited that I'm related to The Secret Garden, but every once in a while, I'll have a man come along and say like this book was integral.

I had one man who's whose mother, while she was dying in the hospital, and he was young. He was like 12 years old. The last book that she intentionally read to him was The Secret Garden. And so, I just, I love all of those stories. They just, they make my heart. Me too. Gregory McGuire, who wrote Wicked.

Huh. He's a friend of mine. I'm a big Oz fan, too, and he's a friend of mine from the Oz Club. So, he very kindly wrote a blurb for the back of this new book about Francis. And so, when I asked him to do it, he said, Yeah, sure, I'll do it. I mean, I really liked A Little Princess better, but I read The Secret Garden over and over again, too.

And then he wrote a very nice book. And I always tell people when people ask me, which is my favorite book, I'm like, or even which is my favorite character. I'm like, I love Sarah, but please don't tell Mary. Don't tell Mary because Sarah, I always related to Sarah from A Little Princess for those who haven't read the book.

She's just, she's sunshine. She is, I feel like she's my spirit animal kind of thing. And I had a hard time with Mary cause she was just gruff and grumpy in the beginning and she was sour. And of course, she had plenty of reasons to be sour and I like her in the end, but I had a hard time with Mary at first.

Angelica: I'm the opposite. I think you are a very sunny person. I think I am too. But I liked Mary because she was, I told you I was bossy as a child and bossy  all my life. And I liked it that Mary just said what she thought. Yeah. Yeah. And finally saw the error of her ways. And I love her. I love Sarah, too.

I really do know.

Keri: Mary is definitely like no filter. She just rolled on it. So good.  Oh, my gosh. So good. Okay. Now on to the personal side of the podcast. So, I always ask all of my guests about the life season that they're in. So as a part of what I do here at the Well-Tended Life, people always ask me what's the one thing people can do to live their best attended life?

And my, my, Thought is always you have to know your season. You have to understand like what is on your plate in order to really inform your yeses and your no's and all of those things. So, for example, right now I'm in a I'm in a caregiving season with my mother. And this really changes the way I go about my life every day.

Used to, I was like, I'm going to do this at this time and I'm going to do that at this time. And now I'm like,  Here are my thoughts and my plans. We'll see how the world works out today. If there's a call from my mom, I got to go the other direction. So, tell me a little bit about the season of life that you're in.

Angelica: I feel like I'm just transitioning. I'm going to be 80 this year. So, I've been retired now for 15 years. And I've had just the most wonderful retirement writing books and traveling around and giving lectures all over the place and also just Richard and I have traveled a great deal in our lives and we've been to England to see where Francis lived and, Just a lot of Europe, European travel, but now, as I'm hitting 80, I'm thinking probably not going to fly over the ocean again.

That's just too hard. And we're doing practical things like, I mean, this isn't good. You're. Put bars on their bathtub and extra rails. We've recently given up 'cause it's stress. I don't drive. I mean I drive, but I don't drive to San Francisco where my daughter lives.

But Richard finally admitted, that's stressful. And so, we started taking the train and getting an Uber and it's just... It's just a different way. It's practical. That's it's not especially great, but I'm still having a great time. I went to the American Library Association this summer, which was in San Diego, just an hour away by plane.

And that was just.  That's where I signed a hundred and some copies of this new book. I'm still very active with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I have wonderful friends in Fresno. That's a key is have some friends who are younger than you are.  I belong to four groups who meet regularly.

Let's see if I can do it. My book club, my critique group, who are all children's writers. A bunch of librarians who we call ourselves the catalog. Now, I'm the kind of young one in that, but they are people I worked with at the Arne Nixon Center and another bunch of librarians.  who worked right in the same library with me.

And we call ourselves The Coven. So that's four groups of all women. And we just have the best time. We, I don't know, we meet, even through COVID we. Zoomed all the time, my critique group meets once a week, this group called the catalog once a week and then we still meet on Zoom because some of them have moved away from Fresno.

So, we get together on Zoom

Keri: And from what I hear and what I want the audience to hear is that. You were intentionally cultivating friendships and the women.  And I think so many people though, don't think about that side. They sit around and think, I wish I had friends.

I wish I had these groups, but unless you're intentionally gathering your people together on a regular basis, the older you get, the more it just starts to splinter away. Cause everybody goes in a different direction. And taking the time to regularly get together with your people.

Angelica: Really that didn't happen for me until I retired. I was so busy working. Yeah.  Again, it's just, I did it to myself. Nobody told me you have to work this hard and do this much. I just did it. I wanted to. And that meant that when I came home, I wanted to eat dinner, read a book, watch TV. And I didn't want to hang out with friends necessarily.

And my job was quite a bit as a librarian talking to people all day. And, yes,

Keri: You were done peopling.

Angelica: Yeah.  And then when I retired,  I got involved with some of these other groups and I found that now I have time for friends. Yeah. That's my retired period has been just so interesting, and I don't plan to change just because I hit 80, except maybe just traveling a little less.

Oh, I fell off my bike this summer. So I gave up bicycle, right?  Oh, my don't ride a bike when you're 79. that's my advice to people.

Keri: Yeah, it might be, some people can do it. I just I think everybody hits their limit for sure. Okay. I mean, you are almost 80. You look like you're healthy and fit and all of the things.

So very grateful for that. You are, you seem to be someone who is definitely living out their best-tended life. So do you have any regular practices that are part of you that, that help you to be healthy, fit, strong and living your best life? Gathering women is clearly one, right?

Angelica: Because I write I try to make myself, even since I was, while I was working it. When I was working, I'd get up on Saturday, the house would be at its absolute lowest point, that was the day I should be cleaning house, or I could be writing a book, and I'd think, what are you an author, or are you the maid? Get in there and write! And I made rules, I had to write two hours on the weekend days, and one hour after supper every night, now, it's not so hard, I mean, pretty much, I get up, I drink coffee, I read the New York Times, and I go write.

And then I take breaks during the day to go do other, I cook.  I like, I read a lot. I used to feel guilty for reading during the day after I retired, but I'm getting a little better about that now. I think  put your first things 1st, the house will wait  and if you can't cook that night, we're having takeout tonight.

Okay.

Keri: Yeah.  I love that. What am I, a writer or a maid? Yeah, yeah. And nobody's ever died from having a house that wasn't perfectly picked up, right? 

Angelica: Unless you're a boarder.

Keri: Oh my gosh, it's so good.

(Well-Tended Journal Ad Break)
And now it's time for my favorite part of the interview because it's inspired by my life tending journal practice. But let me be clear, this is not your grandma's journal. It's more of a growth chart, reflection diary, planting reminder, observation deck, and research notebook all rolled into one.  And when used daily, this journal practice is a life guarding game changer,  guaranteed to produce.

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(Episode resumes)
Keri: Okay, so the last thing is a part of my journal practice. Is I always look back on the day before to spot the joy, goodness and growth.

And it's all based off a quote from secret garden that says Mary hadn't noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it. And so many times we're all just running too fast in our lives. Like you said busy that we're not noticing the joy, goodness and growth around us. So tell me like, what is bringing you joy these days?

Angelica: It's definitely my granddaughter because, had her kind of late in life. I was a late bloomer as a grandmother. And now she's 10. She was just here this weekend for the bookstore signing. And then she's four hours away. I see her maybe once a month. I'm going up to babysit in October.  I had stopped thinking about having grandchildren.

I really was perfectly happy. But to get one, just changed everything for not just for me, but for both sides of her family, I mean, she's just the focus of so much love. And then not only that, but right before COVID, a family moved in across the street, a Chinese American family with 4 kids.

They had 2 then, and no, they had to have 4 now and, the kids are all American citizens, but the parents are becoming American citizens. So, these kids right now are eight, seven, three, and one. They are just delightful and so much fun. So, when I need a kid fix and Fiona's 200 miles away in San Francisco, I go over or they come over and swim in my pool or I babysit for them sometimes.

And they are just a riot. They're the ones who think I'm famous. Cause I have my name on a book.

Keri: I love it.

Angelica: They are just intriguing too because not only are they kids like Fiona and they have this just different view of the world that I haven't been around for many years, little tiny kids, but these are bicultural kids and they speak fluent Mandarin and they try to teach me Chinese or they just have I never know whether this idea is because somebody's three years old or because she's Chinese.

So it's very interesting. And I, they just make me laugh. And when I'm with them, I forget, like I'm working on a new book now, and it's a very serious, heart wrenching book about slavery. When I go over there and play with those little kids, I don't think about it for a second.

Keri: Oh my goodness. So good. Okay.

Second question is about goodness. And really this is something you would write down in your gratitude journal. What are you feeling grateful for these days?

Angelica: I'm very grateful for my husband.  I met him in my German class in college and we grew up together. And I'm very grateful that we're both in pretty good health together, and I'm that's another thing that happens when you get old is you're, friends start disappearing, but we're having a great time.

Okay. And we started playing Scrabble during COVID and we're still playing Scrabble every night. We have tournaments going on and and I'm grateful for all my friends, my new ones, I've lived in Fresno 25 years, so they're not that new, but I have friends from, my, my best friend from eighth grade and I, we talk and email, she lives in Toronto now, but we visit back and forth. So I'm very grateful that I have all these long-term friendships and with Richard, most of all my husband, he's my best friend too.

Keri: Love it. Okay. Last question is about.  And growth is always the hardest to spot, right? It's the life because it comes in these tiny little shoots, right?

Like we're working towards things, all the things, but you know, where are you spotting growth in your life as an almost 80-year-old, like where are you feeling that?

Angelica: I thought about that, but it goes in with my being bossy. Okay. I mean, I've always had jobs where I was in control. I ran the public library where I was. Okay? I invented this job as curator of a children's literature collection. Giving up control is hard. That's really hard for me. And so, this program at the bookstore last week, I was there to read my book, but I didn't get to say when it started, who, what we did first, what we did. Second, I mean, that's just one example, but I mean, also just giving up control to my daughter who says to me, Oh, come on, mom, you want to buy a new sofa, go out and buy a sofa.

Okay.  Cause I think I can't afford a sofa. She- I listen to her. Okay. I'm gonna listen to her all of our life about what to wear because she has very good taste in clothing and she tells me when I'm dressing like a little old lady, but to give up control.  That's been hard for me. And I think I'm much more- people are going to laugh when they hear this.

And I think I'm a lot more relaxed lately and I don't have to control every single thing, and I enjoy it, whatever it is, do you think that's just,

Keri: Do you think that's age or do you think it is experience? Okay. Yeah. I'm just wondering.

Angelica: I mean, does it really matter? If you go this way to the grocery store or that way, I have an opinion about the right way to go to the grocery store, but I, if Richard wants to drive me to the grocery store.

Okay, fine. And that's just an example, but there's so many things like that where I used to think there was a right way to do something.  And I found out that's not necessarily true.

Keri: Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. Oh my gosh, Angelica. This has been so much fun. Thank you for coming on today and sharing and just chatting. I just I mean, my cheeks hurt. It was such a joy for me.

Angelica: Thank you. I told you and your mother, I mean, really, I feel like a member of your family after three books. You are. I am. And it's an honor and It's a great pleasure in my life, and I hope I'm going to come see you sometime soon.

Keri: I hope so too, but if you decide you're not flying, we'll come flying to you.

Angelica: Okay no, I'm just not flying across oceans.

Keri: Got it.  Oh, my goodness, so good. Okay, don't worry everybody, there's going to be all the links to how to find her book and listen to the website. Yes, the websites all the kind of stuff where it will get you to all of her things. But gosh, at the end of the day, thank you everyone who has been listening to the podcast today.

I sincerely hope that this episode has inspired you today to find. A safe space, a quiet space and reignite your imagination maybe by the secret garden and of course by the new children's picture book by Angelica. And I hope you are just living out your best well-tended life out there. So, until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.

Thank you, Angelica. Thank you.

(Outro)

These are the things that cause your head to bob in agreement, your heart to make that tap when a much-needed word of wisdom comes along, or your soul to scream, Aha!  That was the word I was looking for. So, for each episode, I like to share a few of my heart taps. In the show notes with you, but I'm curious, what are your heart tap moments from today's episode? 

Run on over and direct message me your favorite moments, questions, heart taps, and more over at Instagram or Facebook today.  And if you were inspired by this episode or maybe learned something new, make sure to share the show with a friend or post about it in your stories.  Finally, could you do one more favor for me today?

Will you take a minute and hop on over to Apple podcast and leave a kind and thoughtful review for the Well Tended Life podcast?  You see, this is how people find us. And every positive review helps to unlock the door for someone else to get in on the magic of life to do too.  Thank you again for listening and being a part of this Well Tended Life community. 

And until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.