jenniferdeguzman's reviews
318 reviews

Tracy Chevelier vividly sets the scene in a working-class neighborhood in 1790s London as Jem and his family relocate from the countryside after his brother's death on the promise of work from a charismatic circus impresario. Jem, twelve years old, soon makes friends with a street-smart neighborhood girl his age, Maggie, thus setting up the symbolism so that when they meet Jem's neighbor, William Blake, The Songs of Innocence and Experience have two ready examples. To be fair, Chevelier doesn't handle it quite so heavy-handedly. The children are intrigued by their eccentric (he wears a bonnet rouge that signals his support of the French Revolution and writes and prints books, which are exotic to the children, as Jem can barely read and Maggie cannot at all) and quietly kind neighbor, and their conversations spur both to consider the meaning of experience in their own lives.

Since one of the themes is loss of innocence, two young girls in the book are sexually or violently victimized, and while it was handled skillfully, I wondered why it's always girls who have to be the illustrative cases in that theme. But perhaps that was the point.

Maggie is a far more active character than Jem, and of all the characters in the book, she is really the only one who does not passively absorb her experiences. She questions and grasps at something beyond what her station in life seems to dictate.

Chevelier's prose is quite breezy; this is a quick, light read, with some added literary interest and historical color for fans of William Blake and the tumultuous times in which he lived.

A light, magical little romance with beautiful heroines, handsome heroes, and a dastardly villain. Not a deep character study or complex book by any means, Garden Spells nonetheless helped me while away a couple afternoons and made me hungry with its description of food.